New Hampshire Vampires

This is quite old, but I just found this interview of “Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England Vampires”. author and folklorist Michael E. Bell:
When consumption (which is what people used to call tuberculosis that settled in the lungs) took hold in a family, some people in the outlying areas of New [...]

Another study shows why we need national healthcare

A new study in the American Journal of Public Health  (the NY Times has an older version here) has found (this study uses data, it seems, through 2000–the bold is in the Boston Globe post):
After accounting for age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent [...]

More healthcare stuff

This postby Steve Benen shows why liberals and progressives are so upset at the prospect of losing the public option in the healthcare bill:
I continue to think these are not exactly effective negotiating techniques. Republicans say, “We want explicit language in the bill that would restrict coverage for illegal immigrants.” The White House responds, “You [...]

Placebo Effect

I’m a little slow getting to this, perhaps because I find it fascinating. It seems that the placebo effect is getting bigger. The article has some of the historyof the placebo effect:
In a 1955 paper titled “The Powerful Placebo,” published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Beecher described how the placebo effect had [...]

Krauthammer concerned

Charles Krauthammer is doing a bit of concern trolling in his column today:
(1) Forget the public option. Whatever the merits, and they are few, it is political poison.  …
(2) Jettison any reference to end-of-life counseling. People see (correctly) such Medicare-paid advice as subtle encouragement to voluntarily refuse treatment. …
(3) Soft-pedal the idea of government committees [...]

LaRouche: an entertaining crazy

I remember back in the 1980 election watching 30 minute specials put on by Lyndon LaRouche. They were entertaining in short intervals, he would swing from some coherent point to a crazy point. The crazy point usually involved the Queen of England, Kissinger, or Rockefeller (who were leaders in the international drug trade–it seems that [...]

Abortion providers

Here’s what the pro-life contingent wanted (via here):
For thirty-six years, Warren Hern has been one of the few doctors in America to specialize in late abortions. George Tiller was another. And when Dr. Tiller was murdered that Sunday in church, Warren Hern became the only one left.
There is one doctor in the US who will [...]

Rep. Broun says ‘I’m an idiot’

Ok, he didn’t actually say that. He wrote:
Obama has created a new $2 billion federal bureaucracy — a national health care rationing board — that will decide if the medical care you need is “cost efficient.”
And if these federal bureaucrats decide that your treatment is not “Government Approved,” then your doctor will be ordered to [...]

Republicans want uninsured to die

Ok, I don’t really believe my headline. It’s just hard not to get angry and frustrated when the other side makes ludicrous claims (see here for example). And this isn’t fringe elements, the Republican candidate for VP claims that the legislation includes death panels that would not have allowed her baby to be born (and then [...]

End of life conversation=euthanasia?

As usual, there’s a lot of crazy talk from some rightwingers about healthcare (via Pandagon). One of the craziest is that the new healthcare plans will lead to euthanasia of the elderly. This would be a joke except it’s being pushed by people in Congress–here’s a statement from Reps Boehner and McCotter:
Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation [...]

Comparing things is un-American

I’m really confused about the backlash against comparative effectiveness research (CER). Hilzoy looks at this (and links to this paperby Jerry Avorn) and is as confused as me:
You’d think that doing research to figure out which treatments are most effective would be an obviously good thing. But no: it is, apparently, the first step on [...]

Capitalist rationing is fine

Via Steve Benen, there is healthcare rationing in the US:
Medical crews told him he needed a blood test, chest X-rays and probably a CT scan to check for head injuries. And he certainly should have had treatment for major road rash, including raw scrapes on his face, neck and hands.
But the 31-year-old editor for a [...]

But we need secret elections to stop intimidation

People who want to keep out unions, always say they’re against the Employee Free Choice Act because there needs to be a secret ballot so that the unions can’t intimidate workers. Let’s see what such a fair election is like:
An N.L.R.B. judge concluded that management had committed so many serious violations of the law — [...]

Pope shows no mercy for AIDs

Well then, it seems that the Pope is really against contraception:
Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.
”You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. ”On the contrary, it increases the problem.
Lovely man. If people [...]

This is a tough spot for Obama?

I’m with Kevin Drum, this seems to be a pretty straightforward choice:
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would “fight hard” for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports [...]

Comparative effectiveness of drugs

Hmm, a few people are writing about the push by drug and medical device companies to take money out of the stimulus package for comparative effectiveness studies for treatments. The reason there’s need for this is that the FDA approves a new drug or treatment if it’s safe and effective, they do not test to see if [...]

An ultrasound before an abortion?

Hmm, it seems the next big attempt against abortion is requiring an ultrasound (here are a list of states that are considering it in some way). The main objective is to make it harder to get an abortion either with a waiting period (which would mean a woman would have to make at least two visits) [...]

Doctors Say They’re Not the Problem

A sample sent out by a doctor’s association to doctor’s finds:
A vast majority of physicians in Massachusetts say the fear of being sued is driving them to order unnecessary tests, procedures, referrals, and even hospitalizations, a phenomenon that is adding at least $1.4 billion to annual healthcare costs in the Bay State, according to a [...]

More ‘Rights for Me, not Thee’

Here’s more evidence of how people who are religious are given preferential treatment:
After a group of doctors challenged a South Dakota law forcing them to inform women that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” — using exactly that language — President Bush’s appointees to the federal appeals courts took [...]

The Conscience Clause and Contraception

I’m a bit late to the table, but it seems that the HHS has come out with proposed new regulations about health care providers and their right to refuse to provide certain services due to their religious beliefs. It notes that there are currently three laws that protect this right. You might think this would [...]