Health & Travel
Local Health Reform: How Tampa Does It
Communities slow hospital admissions and treatable complications
A community the size of Rhode Island raised sales taxes to buy medical coverage for the uninsured. Result: Fewer hospital admissions, reduced complications from treatable ailments such as diabetes and asthma, and savings in property taxes. (Congressional Quarterly Researcher)
Recurring Quest for Health Reform: First Enthusiasm, Then Failure
The usual beneficiaries? Only some of us.
Every 15 years or so, health reform arouses great enthusiasm, only to fail spectacularly. Sometimes, specific populations — the elderly, the disabled, low-income children – have benefited. Universal coverage? Elusive as the Holy Grail. (Congressional Quarterly Researcher)
‘Used Our Kids as Guinea Pigs’
U.S. conducts, pays for experiments on unsuspecting Americans
The letter from school said nothing about a medical experiment (The Plain Dealer)
Can U.S. Afford to Insure All?
Escalating costs, budget shortfalls, rising needs could overwhelm health-care system
Health coverage for more Americans – is it even feasible? An analysis in Congressional Quarterly
The Lariam Files
Why didn’t patients know of popular drug’s devastating effects? (Washington Post)
Newt Gingrich's Health Care Mission
His for-profit company advises clients such as IBM on how to grab some of the $19 billion earmarked for digitizing health care records (BusinessWeek)
The Dubious Promise of Digital Medicine
In a stimulus-fueled frenzy, GE, Google and others are piling into the business. But electronic health records have a checkered history. (BusinessWeek)
Finding of Fact
In medical science, there’s often a big difference between what one thinks is true – and the facts. A sampler of occasional articles from The Washington Post:
Ginger: As wonderful an herb as it seems?
Foreign Tests Don't Meet U.S. Criteria
Hype, hope and heartbreak a chronic condition
The cycle of hype, hope and heartbreak surrounding clinical trials has become a chronic condition in the global pharmaceutical industry, which now initially tests two-thirds of all products for Americans overseas. The experiments often involve fraud, concealed side effects, improvised experiments and human rights abuses. (The Plain Dealer)
Research Standards Overseas Vary Greatly
Europeans worry about fraud, sloppy drug experiments
With human lives and huge investments at stake, the global pharmaceutical industry increasingly relies on research from outside the United States, where fraud and the use of unwitting test subjects is commonplace. “It’s our little secret…frightening,” acknowledges an overseer of experiments on four continents. (The Plain Dealer)
« newer articles — more articles »
