One of the pleasures of working for the Tracker is that it's a perfect excuse to sit down in the morning and "read in," sampling the morning's stories, without that voice in your ear that says "Stop fooling around and get to work!"
Here are a few things I noted this morning:
...One of the pleasures of working for the Tracker is that it's a perfect excuse to sit down in the morning and "read in," sampling the morning's stories, without that voice in your ear that says "Stop fooling around and get to work!"
Here are a few things I noted this morning:
Insurance woes
We've read plenty about the difficulties of jousting with insurance companies to get reimbursement for medical care, but I liked a story in Science Times by a Suleika Jaouad, a young woman who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at 22. She's now 24, and she talks about her dealings with insurance companies with a wide-eyed innocence that reminds us, once again, how much financial burden serious illness puts on families who have insurance. "...
Barbara Feder Ostrov at Reporting on Health has put together a short list of summer healthcare stories you shouldn't miss. I've mentioned a couple of them here: Atul Gawande's...
Barbara Feder Ostrov at Reporting on Health has put together a short list of summer healthcare stories you shouldn't miss. I've mentioned a couple of them here: Atul Gawande's story on healthcare and The Cheesecake Factory in The New Yorker, and a New York Times exposé on excessive use of cardiac procedures. But she has a few other tasty tidbits as well, including a couple that I missed.
Find her recommendations here.
-Paul Raeburn
On Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill that could save $200 billion in health care costs over the next 15 years. This seems to me to be an important development, worthy of national coverage,...
On Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill that could save $200 billion in health care costs over the next 15 years. This seems to me to be an important development, worthy of national coverage, because the Massachusetts law was signed by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and because it was the model for President Obama's health care reform legislation.
Yet the coverage seems spotty even in Massachusetts. From The Boston Globe and many others, we mostly get short pieces that report the potential savings and otherwise quote partisans about whether the bill is a good idea or not. It's not easy to find any information on the bill itself, or how the cost control measures would work....
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of ...
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of The New Yorker, Gawande begins in an unlikely setting--at dinner on a Saturday night at The Cheesecake Factory with his two teenage daughters and three of their friends. He marvels at the restaurant. It has something for everyone--wasabi-crusted ahi tuna, and Bud Light and buffalo wings. The food is inexpensive, the place is packed, the atmosphere is Disney-like, and the staff is neatly dressed and attentive. "As for the food--can I say this without losing forever my chance of getting a reservation at Per Se?--it was delicious," Gawande writes.
Expensive restaurants serve as test kitchens for the restaurant chains, he writes, and some of the best...
I'm in the airport, on my way home from the annual meeting in Atlanta of the Association of Health Care Journalists. I saw a lot of old friends, met new friends, and established in-person friendships with many Twitter and Facebook friends. (Most overheard line at meetings: "It's so nice to meet you in person...
I'm in the airport, on my way home from the annual meeting in Atlanta of the Association of Health Care Journalists. I saw a lot of old friends, met new friends, and established in-person friendships with many Twitter and Facebook friends. (Most overheard line at meetings: "It's so nice to meet you in person!") As usual, some of the best discussions occurred over a drink or at dinner, when we compared notes about stories, editors, the financial health of old and new media, and making a living as a freelancer. More than 600 of AHCJ's members turned out for the meeting.
Former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter kicked things off with a report on the health-care work the Carter Center is doing in Africa, including the near...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage,"...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage," said the AP. The story appeared around the web, in various newspapers and websites.
Not many others covered the story, which was based on an employer survey by the consulting group Towers Watson. But I did find a similarly frightening headline at International Business Times: "Employers Look Towards Ending Health Coverage, Survey."
Boise Weekly offered its own...
I've expressed the opinion here that science journalists bring a unique set of...
I've expressed the opinion here that science journalists bring a unique set of qualifications to their work, and that other journalists--and other authorities and experts--often cannot do the job as well as a science writer. A good example of the problem appeared in The New York Times over the weekend.
The Times piece was written by Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist; bioethicist; former White House adviser; the brother of Chicago mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel; the brother of Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel--and an all-around smart guy. In September, he will join the University of Pennsylvania with "...
Today's journalism riddle: What do you lead with--number of cancer cases, or number of deaths?
If you're a classic newspaper type, you get the deaths in the lede, no matter what. If a boat capsized, for example, the AP bulletin would look something like this: "Boat capsizes, killing at least thirty-two. MORE...
Today's journalism riddle: What do you lead with--number of cancer cases, or number of deaths?
If you're a classic newspaper type, you get the deaths in the lede, no matter what. If a boat capsized, for example, the AP bulletin would look something like this: "Boat capsizes, killing at least thirty-two. MORE." Never mind who, what, when, where, and why--the deaths get in the lede, and you worry about the details later.
Today's story concerns studies from the Archives of Internal Medicine concluding that CT scans could be causing 14,500 deaths a year and 29,000 cases of cancer.
Thomas H. Maugh of the Los Angeles Times doesn't get the deaths or the cancer cases in the lede, and consequently they are not in the headline. But the 14,500 figure is in the deck underneath the headline....
Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina (photo) likes biotech. "One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology...
Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina (photo) likes biotech. "One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology industry is that it is a homegrown success story that has been an engine of job creation in this country."
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri likes it, too. I needn't bore you with her quote, because it matches Wilson's word for word.
According to Robert Pear of The New York Times, they were both using "language suggested by the lobbyists." In a front-page story in Sunday's Times, Pear reports that 42 members of the House--22 Republicans and 20 Democrats--repeated talking points suggested by Genentech.
It's a remarkable political...
A tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks is among the things Congress is considering to help pay for health reform. We can guess how various...
A tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks is among the things Congress is considering to help pay for health reform. We can guess how various industries might respond to that, but we don't have to, because two reporters have told us.
"Soft drink makers, supermarket companies, agriculture and the fast-food business have poured millions into campaigning against what they fear could be a burgeoning national movement to raise money for health care reform by taxing sweetened beverages," they write. The story appears on the websites of the Center for Public Integrity and the Huffington Post Investigative...
I was looking for a clear explanation of yesterday's health reform news, and I thought I'd found it in a short sidebar on the AP wire: "Health Care Issues: Public Plan Compromises," the...
I was looking for a clear explanation of yesterday's health reform news, and I thought I'd found it in a short sidebar on the AP wire: "Health Care Issues: Public Plan Compromises," the hedline read. But the piece was a disappointment. Instead of a list of bullets on what is and is not in the House bill introduced yesterday, I got a brief rehash of the politics: It's controversial. Dems think it will lower prices; Republicans don't.
Then, in a paragraph labeled "What it means," I got more politics, and discussion of triggers, liberals' preferences, and state options that are not in the bill.
Bayonne Medical Center
In February, an insurance courier showed up at Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey, trying to deliver a warning...
Bayonne Medical Center
In February, an insurance courier showed up at Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey, trying to deliver a warning to a patient that if he didn't leave the hospital immediately, his insurance company would refuse to pay many of his bills.
Thirteen other couriers showed up. All were rebuffed by the hospital.
One patient with a severe lung infection was so alarmed that she started packing her bag to go while intravenous antibiotics were still dripping into her arm.
I've cribbed all of this from a powerful story by health writer Amy Goldstein in today's Washington Post. See Goldstein's story for an explanation of how...
In one of the most successful health advocacy promotions of all time, breast cancer advocates have persuaded magazines, newspapers,...
In one of the most successful health advocacy promotions of all time, breast cancer advocates have persuaded magazines, newspapers, businesses, writers--us!--to do stories about breast cancer in October, breast cancer awareness month. And it's not quite October yet, but here they come.
The American Cancer Society has joined the party, releasing statistics showing that breast cancer death rate continues to drop 2 percent a year, a trend that began in 1990.
Pat Wechsler at Bloomberg noted the...
Thirty miles from Washington, in Gaithersburg, Md., in a neighborhood of "$300,000, light-filled homes" on Linden Hall Lane, Washington Post...
Thirty miles from Washington, in Gaithersburg, Md., in a neighborhood of "$300,000, light-filled homes" on Linden Hall Lane, Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte discovers that everybody has a problem with health insurance.
"These are the people President Obama counted on to give his signature health-care reform effort the grass-roots oomph it needs to get through Congress," Schulte wrote in a story published Sunday. "But no one on this cul-de-sac in Montgomery County has taken his or her private frustrations to a public meeting; no one has lobbied a lawmaker."
The Post does something important with this story: It...
Investigative reporter Andrew Skolnick has found the real death panels.
In...
Investigative reporter Andrew Skolnick has found the real death panels.
In a well-written, considered op-ed in the Buffalo News, he offers a few useful tidbits I hadn't seen anywhere else. We know that insurance companies are prone to cancel the insurance policies of people who get expensively sick. And many of us read of a recent court decision in South Carolina that slapped Fortis Insurance (now known as Assurant) with a $10 million fine for rescinding the insurance policy of a teen-age student after he tested positive for the AIDS virus.
One detail I hadn't heard was that insurers make these decisions in what are called "rescission committees." And according to Skolnick, in the two-hour...
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