Elizabeth Warren, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler | Baltimore Sun

Health insurance is a bit like a hospital gown. From the front it appears to shield the essentials. Closer inspection, however, reveals a lot uncovered behind - and only a tenuous thread prevents full exposure.

Most Americans think they’re covered, except the 45 million who are uninsured (”going bare,” in insurance industry parlance). But few of us are really shielded from the financial ravages of illness.

Each year, 1 million people are bankrupted by illness or medical bills, according to the Harvard Consumer Bankruptcy Project, the first in-depth study of medical bankruptcy.

Indeed, we found that about half of the families filing for bankruptcy do so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem.

Most of those filing medical bankruptcies were solidly middle-class - they had gone to college, owned homes and had good jobs. And more than three-quarters had health insurance when they first fell ill. But the coverage often had gaping holes - co-payments, deductibles and exclusions, such as physical therapy. For others, job-based coverage slipped away when a breadwinner got too sick to work.
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healingarts | May 13, 2005 |

Paul Krugman, NYTimes.com

There was a brief flurry of outrage when Congress passed the 2003 Medicare bill. The news media reported on the scandalous vote in the House of Representatives: Republican leaders violated parliamentary procedure, twisted arms and perhaps engaged in bribery to persuade skeptical lawmakers to change their votes in a session literally held in the dead of night.

Later, the media reported on another scandal: it turned out that the administration had deceived Congress about the bill’s likely cost.

But the real scandal is what’s in the legislation. It’s an object lesson in how special interests hold America’s health care system hostage.
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healingarts | May 6, 2005 |

Paul Krugman |NYTimes

American health care is unique among advanced countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector. It’s also uniquely inefficient. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country, yet many Americans lack health insurance and don’t receive essential care.

This week yet another report emphasized just how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record, more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance.

And lack of insurance leads to inadequate medical attention. Over a 12-month period, 41 percent of the uninsured were unable to see a doctor when needed because of cost; 56 percent had no personal doctor or health care provider.
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healingarts | April 29, 2005 |

Katharine Mieszkowski | Salon

Whoops. There’s a toxin in the new food pyramid.

Apparently, the United States Department of Agriculture, which released the pyramid last week, forgot that women of child-bearing age and young children aren’t ever supposed to eat swordfish and king mackerel, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendations. (Nursing moms, would-be moms and kids are supposed to limit their diet of tuna, too.)

Those fish are among those most contaminated with mercury, a pollutant released from coal-fired power plants — which the Bush administration has failed to crack down on. According to E.P.A. research, some 600,000 U.S. newborns, each year, are at risk for learning disorders and behavioral problems because of their exposure to the neurotoxin in the womb.
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healingarts | April 26, 2005 |

Paul Krugman | NYTimes

The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don’t appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?

An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.
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healingarts | April 22, 2005 |

Katharine Mieszkowski | Salon

Why do more and more kids in the U.S. have pudgy paunches bulging over the tops of their low-rider jeans? When it comes to the much-publicized childhood obesity epidemic, everyone has a pet theory.

With today’s super-sized fast food portions, kids pack it in by the fistful of fries and 20-ounce Coke. More meals at home consist of takeout or precooked ready-made fare, loaded with fat and calories. TV and video games have vanquished running around outside. Kids in the city have too few safe places to play. And kids in the suburbs have no sidewalks to walk on, much less places to walk to. Fewer kids walk or ride their bikes to school, either because there’s no safe route, or it’s simply too far. At school, phys ed and recess have been shortened or eliminated, through the double whammy of budget cuts and renewed emphasis on academic testing. And many schools sell junk food to kids in the cafeteria in an attempt to subsidize shrinking budgets through soft drink and candy bar revenue.

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healingarts | April 16, 2005 |

Paul Krugman | NYTimes

A dozen years ago, everyone was talking about a health care crisis. But then the issue faded from view: a few years of good data led many people to conclude that H.M.O.’s and other innovations had ended the historic trend of rising medical costs.

But the pause in the growth of health care costs in the 1990’s proved temporary. Medical costs are once again rising rapidly, and our health care system is once again in crisis. So now is a good time to ask why other advanced countries manage to spend so much less than we do, while getting better results.

Before I get to the numbers, let me deal with the usual problem one encounters when trying to draw lessons from foreign experience: somebody is sure to bring up the supposed horrors of Britain’s government-run system, which historically had long waiting lists for elective surgery.

In fact, Britain’s system isn’t as bad as its reputation - especially for lower-paid workers, whose counterparts in the United States often have no health insurance at all. And the waiting lists have gotten shorter.

But in any case, Britain isn’t the country we want to look at, because its health care system is run on the cheap, with total spending per person only 40 percent as high as ours. (more…)

healingarts | April 15, 2005 |

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Common Dreams

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has buried a provision in the “Protecting America in the War on Terror Act” to insulate the pharmaceutical industry from liability for venal actions that may have poisoned an entire generation of Americans.

Mounting evidence suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children’s vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.

Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations. In the early 1990s, public-health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains.

Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children’s vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism. (more…)

healingarts | April 14, 2005 |

Paul Krugman | NYTimes

Those of us who accuse the administration of inventing a Social Security crisis are often accused, in return, of do-nothingism, of refusing to face up to the nation’s problems. I plead not guilty: America does face a real crisis - but it’s in health care, not Social Security.

Well-informed business executives agree. A recent survey of chief financial officers at major corporations found that 65 percent regard immediate action on health care costs as “very important.” Only 31 percent said the same about Social Security reform.

But serious health care reform isn’t on the table, and in the current political climate it probably can’t be. You see, the health care crisis is ideologically inconvenient.

Let’s start with some basic facts about health care. (more…)

healingarts | April 11, 2005 |

Timothy Noah, Slate

The English language desperately needs a word to describe something that is objectively true but unrecognized as such because nobody wants to believe it. I hereby coin one: “flakt.” Henceforth, a flakt will be defined as a measurable, demonstrable reality that the great majority of people refuse to acknowledge. It is a flakt that, even though the American public is convinced that foreign aid makes up a huge proportion of the federal budget—in one 2001 poll, respondents put it at 24 percent of total spending—foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It is a flakt that the war in Iraq has impeded the international manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. It is a flakt that Million Dollar Baby was nowhere near the best picture released during 2004.

Phillip Longman published an article in the January/February Washington Monthly (”The Best Care Anywhere“) that states a very important flakt: Socialized medicine has been tried in the United States, and it has proven superior to health care supplied by the private sector.

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healingarts | March 9, 2005 |