Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Almost one in five South Africans have HIV. South Africa is the country with the most individuals living with HIV (5.6 million); it also has the most HIV deaths annually (310,000). Despite these grim facts, there is some good news. The Economist reports: “Although the number of South Africans living with the disease continues to…
“All tobacco companies are state-owned, and the industry provides signifiant revenue; it also directly employs more than half a million people. From the government’s perspective, smoking is important to stability, both economic and social. Some cigarettes are even subsidized–the cheapest brands cost as little as thirty cents a pack, because officials fear that farmers will…
The Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System (MPSMS) is a national surveillance project aimed at identifying the rates of specific adverse events within the Medicare population. It is administered by the Quality Improvement Group (QIG) in the Office of Clinical Standards and Quality (OCSQ). The goal of the project is not to monitor physicians for best practices or…
While walking around in San Francisco’s Presidio, I noticed a refurbished building which happened to be a former Public Health Service Hospital. After investigating its origins, I dug up the following information regarding one of the United States’ first efforts to provide an individual health insurance mandate: “In July of 1798, Congress passed – and…
According to Marshall Poe, drinking in college has more positives than negatives. “Rowdy drinking is not the problem. It is an essential, ineradicable, and largely positive element of American college culture. The problem is students who cannot or will not engage in rowdy drinking safely, for they often harm themselves and others.” How is drinking a…
According to a recent study by Pollack and Lynch (2009), having your house foreclosed is bad for your health. The Penn Gazette summarizes the paper’s findings as follows: “[the authors] presented sobering findings culled from a survey of 250 Philadelphians who had sought credit counseling for home mortgage foreclosure. More than one-third of the study…
In my job, I spend nearly my entire day staring at a computer screen. Whether this is writing computer code, compiling a report, reading papers, or checking my email, I am constantly in a seated position. I do, however, exercise six mornings per week. Does this mean that I am an active, healthy person since…
One measure of longevity that may better reflect the quality of a medical care in a country is life expectancy at age 50. According to a recent article in the Penn SAS Magazine (p. 16-p.17) life expectancy in the U.S. for non-smokers is 84.9 for females and 81.2 for males. These figures rank 7th and…
Conventional wisdom holds that economists advocate for reducing regulation on most policy arenas. Regulation imposes costs and businesses and is often ineffective. Further, as technology and market conditions change, regulations which were originally welfare enhancing can now become archane. The public generally views the FDA’s pre-approval as a worthwhile endeavor. The goal of FDA pre-approval…
The California HealthCare Foundation has an almanac entry on Children’s Health Coverage Facts and Figures. Eligibility requirements for these programs is described in this table. Other key findings include: The proportion of children without health insurance continued to decline through 2007, though the pace of improvement has slowed. Nearly 80 percent of California’s uninsured children…