Who should help pay for health care? At its heart, the health reform debate is about this question.
Right now, you and I pay for health care, as evidenced by the growing mountains of medical bankruptcies in this country. Health care costs are heaped on consumers and on their employers, while insurance companies profit.
Under reform, this [...]

Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works with in Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos’s organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to [...]

NEWS
Baucus Offers Health Plan but Lacks G.O.P. Support – New York Times
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday unveiled his long-awaited plan to remake the nation’s health care system and insure millions of Americans. But he did not win support from a single Republican despite tailoring his proposal to be less costly and [...]

Senator Rockefeller gives Senator Baucus evidence that health insurance cooperatives are “untested and unsubstantiated — and should not be considered as a national model for health insurance.”
Read more…
Tags: health care web site development, home health care products, canada health care, health care supplies, ethical issues in health care, health [...]

President Obama gave a compelling speech this morning to an enthusiastic and predominantly young crowd at the University of Maryland in College Park. "It’s about what kind of country you want to be," Obama told them, and "… our history tells us that each and every time we faced a choice between the easy road [...]

Richard Elmore, hosts the latest Health Wonk Review over at Healthcare Technology News. This week’s edition features a piece by Tom Emswiler highlighting how savings from better care can help pay for reform, as well as piece from Elizabeth Carpenter setting the record straight about some of the misinformation around reform. Check it out!
Tags: health [...]

As policymakers put the final touches on health care legislation that would expand coverage to millions of Americans, it is important that they ask themselves, "Coverage for what?"
Two new reports from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute and the Kaiser Family Foundation tackle this question head on, looking at health coverage for children and [...]

I’ve met Dr. Doug Eby twice, exchanged emails, spoken on the phone, read articles by and about him, and I’m still not quite sure how he ended up practicing medicine in Anchorage, Alaska. But I do know that the innovations and quality he and his colleagues have achieved in a challenging setting is attracting [...]

We are not quite sure what Lyndon Johnson would have done had he lived in the age of YouTube (the mind boggles), but his daughter, Linda Bird Johnson Robb, jumped in to make a video with the Alliance for Retired Americans that aims to reassure U.S. seniors that health reform is in their interest, and [...]

When you, or more likely your doctor, reads an article in a medical journal on the efficacy of a certain drug, it would be nice to know whether the article includes research or writing contributions from people or companies other than the credited author — such as, say, the pharmaceutical company …
[This is a content summary [...]

It’s almost World Series time in the US, so here’s a baseball story, courtesy the Pittsburgh Business Times,
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center lobbyist Leslie McCombs used Pittsburgh Pirates baseball tickets purchased by UPMC’s insurance arm to entertain film executives and others to promote the creation of a state film tax credit, according to the State [...]

At Healthcare Renewal we often write of the dangers of financial conflict of interest towards medical research and practice.
Here is a plea from a father of an 18 year old patient whose death became a cause célèbre against conflict of interest, only to then be swallowed up in the sea of silence known as the [...]

I’ve been fortunate and grateful that my book, Lean Hospitals, has received good reviews on Amazon:

5 Star Reviews = 11
4 Star Reviews = 1

This week, I got my first “3 Star” review. That’s fine, I’m not too sore about it really. It happens when there are that many reviews, not everyone is going to [...]

Open publication – Free publishing – More infertility

Tags: health care insurance, health care issues in america, obama health care plan, health care occupations, france has long wait times for health care, alternative health care, holistic health care, oklahoma health care authority, flaws of universal health care, [...]

There are several potential uses for Google Wave in the healthcare context. The first, most powerful use is the ability of the health community to implement patient-centered communication. Doctors and patients are able to initiate communicate around a condition and all things related to the patient’s condition are captured within a wavelet (individual conversations/collaborations). Things [...]

At Imperial College London, medical students navigate a full-service hospital where they see patients, order X-rays, consult with colleagues and make diagnoses.

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FacetoFace Health is your trusted site for connecting one-on-one with others who share similar health experiences. Share your story, and find others, quickly and privately. Humanizing Healthcare – that’s what we do.
I like the idea that you can “match yourself” with patients with similar diseases.This way, expert patients can help newbies deal with the medical [...]

OK, so apparently after Joe Wilson was publicly rebuked for calling the President a liar, the administration decided rather than ignore the outburst, they’d throw him—and his fellow xenophobes, a bone. Obama has made it clear from the start that undocumented immigrants will not have access to any government programs or subsidies for health care. [...]

Introduction:
Diabetes is a disease that affects how the body uses glucose (say: gloo-kose), a sugar that is the body’s main source of fuel. It is a chronic condition that needs close attention, but with some practical knowledge, you can become your most important ally in learning to live with the disease.
“The prevalence of diabetes is [...]

Today Max Baucus (D-Montana), Montana senator, and leader of the Senate Finance Committee’s Gang of Six, three Democrat and three Republican senators ,who have spent months laboring to craft a bipartisan health reform bill, released the final version of his bill.
The bill’s contents drew immediate negative responses – from Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller and Ron [...]