Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Monday, January 21, 2013

Inaugurations & Uninsured - Four Years Later


On Inauguration Day 2009, I watched the ceremony and parade from an operating room. On the table was a woman without health care insurance who had delayed treatment for fear of bankrupting her family.



http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_img_full/image/image_file/p012013lj-0022_1_0.jpg
whitehouse.gov
As some monitors displayed a bulging mass pushing aside organs in the patient's abdomen, other screens showed the then-new President, Barack Obama, taking his oath and watching the parade. As the surgeons and nurses worked to help one woman without health care coverage, some of them donating their time, the plight of millions of other people in similar situations was on their minds.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The media are influential... on everyone else, say Alzheimer's specialists


A new survey of dementia specialists caught my eye for two reasons.


One, most said they intend to use a newly-approved $3000 test for anyloid deposits in the brain, even though they concede the results can be misleading (for instance, while a lack of amyloid found on this test means a person probably doesn't have Alzheimer's, many people have the deposts, but not Alzheimer's, so the meaning of a positive result is unclear).

Two, half of them "felt media coverage of testing would influence whether amyloid imaging became commonly used in clinical practice." But not a single respondent (0 of 135) "felt their decision to use amyloid imaging would be influenced by media coverage."