Prometheus 6

After all, this is America. They have the freedom to get another job. 

Protections Set for Antiabortion Health Workers
Opponents Denounce Proposed Regulation Allowing Federal Officials to Pull Funding
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 22, 2008; A01

The Bush administration yesterday announced plans to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect doctors, nurses and other health-care workers who object to abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs.

The rule empowers federal health officials to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, doctors' offices and other entities if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds.

"People should not be forced to say or do things they believe are morally wrong," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said. "Health-care workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience."

1 in 2 believe prayer trumps doctor's prognosis
20 percent of docs also say God can reverse terminal prognosis, study finds
The Associated Press
updated 4:29 p.m. ET, Mon., Aug. 18, 2008

CHICAGO - When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults — 57 percent — said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.

The Office of Management and Budget released a report in 2006 stating that risk assessment should focus on actual, rather than possible, harm caused by toxins. This sounds reasonable, but Congress intended for risk assessment to be a preventive measure; by the time the dangers of toxins are apparent, it's often too late to protect workers. 

A Toxic Proposal
The Labor Department politicizes the regulation of workplace health.
Monday, August 18, 2008; A10

FOR 7 1/2 YEARS, the Labor Department has neglected the workers it's supposed to protect. Now it is rushing to make its pro-industry stand official policy. The Post's Carol D. Leonnig reported that the Labor Department has fast-tracked a proposal that would make it more difficult to regulate workplace safety.

There is a link between the economy and mental-health problems such as depression, treatment providers said. ... “When they're not able to provide for their families, the stress and depression are going to increase,” Kathy Tremaine, director of Cumberland River Comprehensive Care, said of people having financial problems.

More drug use, less treatment in E. Ky.
By Bill Estep

LONDON — A higher proportion of people in Appalachia abuse prescription painkillers than in the rest of the nation, and the problem is even greater in coal-mining areas such as Eastern Kentucky, according to a federal study.

Compounding the problem, relatively few facilities in Appalachia offer short and long-term residential treatment — the kind of service needed by many people addicted to OxyContin and other painkillers.

This time the agreement is pretty absolute. Bits 'o emphasis added here and there...

...why be nervous about the prospects for reform? Because it’s hard to get universal care established in the first place. There are, I’d argue, three big hurdles.

First, the Democrats have to win the election — and win it by enough to face down Republicans, who are still, 42 years after Medicare went into operation, denouncing “socialized medicine.”

Second, they have to overcome the public’s fear of change.

Some health care reformers wanted the Democrats to endorse a single-payer, Medicare-type system for all. On the sheer economic merits, they’re right: single-payer would be more efficient than a system that preserves a role for private insurance companies.

His draft rule isn't redefining abortion but it would if it were a rule instead of a draft rule.

Birth Control Fears Addressed
HHS Chief Says Draft Rule Is Not Redefining Abortion
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 9, 2008; A02

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has denied that a controversial draft regulation would redefine common birth control methods as abortion and protect the rights of doctors and other health-care workers who refuse to provide them.

In a statement posted on his blog on Thursday, Leavitt appeared to try to allay fears that the proposed regulation would create sweeping new obstacles to women seeking a variety of commonly used contraceptives, such as birth control pills and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

"An early draft of the regulation found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review," Leavitt said. "It contained words that lead some to conclude my intent is to deal with the subject of contraceptives, somehow defining them as abortion. Not true."

It enabled the subprime mortgage bubble and collapse. I'm sure it will be at least as helpful for the medical insurance companies.

Also, if I recall correctly, there's health information on your credit report...yup, check the bolded line from this, on employment background checks:

Aren't some of my personal records confidential?

The following types of information may be useful for an employer to make a hiring decision. However, under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, the employer is required to get your permission before obtaining the records. (See PRC Fact Sheet 11, "From Cradle to Grave: Government Records and Your Privacy," www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs11-pub.htm)

--------------->8---snip-snip!!---8<---------------

• Medical records. In California and many states, medical records are confidential. There are only a few instances when a medical record can be released without your knowledge or authorization. The FCRA also requires your specific permission for the release of medical records. If employers require physical examinations after they make a job offer, they will have access to the results. The Americans with Disabilities Act allows a potential employer to inquire only about your ability to perform specific job functions. (42 USC §12101)

The FCRA is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and I don't think the FCRA compels credit agencies to show YOU that information at all...after all, it's not credit information.

Oh, right...this is what brought all that on...

Prescription Data Used To Assess Consumers
Records Aid Insurers but Prompt Privacy Concerns
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 4, 2008; A01

Health and life insurance companies have access to a powerful new tool for evaluating whether to cover individual consumers: a health "credit report" drawn from databases containing prescription drug records on more than 200 million Americans.

Collecting and analyzing personal health information in commercial databases is a fledgling industry, but one poised to take off as the nation enters the age of electronic medical records. While lawmakers debate how best to oversee the shift to computerized records, some insurers have already begun testing systems that tap into not only prescription drug information, but also data about patients held by clinical and pathological laboratories.

H.I.V. Study Finds Rate 40% Higher Than Estimated
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

MEXICO CITY — The United States has significantly underreported the number of new H.I.V. infections occurring nationally each year, with a study released here on Saturday showing that the annual infection rate is 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 56,300 people became newly infected with H.I.V in 2006, compared with the 40,000 figure the agency has cited as the recent annual incidence of the disease.

AIDS Prevention Having an Effect
New Cases Have Stabilized Since 1998, CDC Reports in Update on Epidemic
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008; A02

Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released yesterday, reveal that although the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect.

Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter-million people since 1998 -- largely because of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a decade ago.

The new, if indirect, evidence that prevention programs are paying off was one of the few encouraging findings in an update on the American AIDS epidemic released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the eve of the 17th International AIDS Conference, in Mexico City.

"Over 95 percent of people living with HIV are not transmitting to someone else in a given year," said David R. Holtgrave, an expert on AIDS prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "What that says is the transmission rate has been kept very low by prevention efforts."

In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

Anthrax scientist commits suicide as FBI closes in
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU
The Associated Press
Friday, August 1, 2008; 2:17 AM

WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

Bush is trying to create wedge issues for McCain.

Critics charge that the proposal is the latest example of the administration politicizing science to advance ideological goals.

Notice it's not just doctors that can deny your reproductive rights, it's health care workers. Some asshole clerk in the back of an insurance company can deny you. Some geek at a pharmacy cash register can refuse to deliver your filled prescription.

Workers' Religious Freedom vs. Patients' Rights
Proposal Would Deny Federal Money if Employees Must Provide Care to Which They Object
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A01

A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients' rights.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

Once again, lawmakers are willing to impose on the District something they wouldn't contemplate for their home districts.

Of course. Why do you think D.C. school system got screwed? D.C. has been the victim of every urban experiment some Congressman wanted to run, because...

It matters not a whit to Mr. Souder or the NRA that District residents have a right of self-governance.

They do not. Just try that crap in New York City, Boston or Dallas. You remember what happened when the Feds came in to tell local school districts in the South how to act, right?

Trigger-Happy on the Hill
Writing D.C. gun laws isn't Congress's job.
Friday, July 25, 2008; A20

DISTRICT residents are sadly accustomed to congressional interference in their affairs [P6: See? No self rule]. Usually, the meddling comes in a bid to overturn local legislation. But a move to actually write a new gun law for the District represents a new low. Or, as Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called it, "a special outrage."

In Surprise Move, EPA Bans Carbofuran Residue on Food
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 25, 2008; A02

The Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday that it will no longer allow residue of the toxic pesticide carbofuran on domestic or imported food, a decision that would effectively remove the chemical from the U.S. market.

EPA officials said they made the decision -- which surprised environmentalists as well as the pesticide's sole U.S. manufacturer -- on the grounds that the chemical residue poses an unacceptable safety risk to toddlers.

"This is a product that we don't believe meets our high standards for the general population, particularly for small children who are more sensitive," said James Gulliford, EPA associate administrator for the office of prevention, pesticides and toxic substances. "While there is little exposure today [to the pesticide], we don't think there's a need, a reason for any exposure."

Single payer health care. Call it socialism if you like.

Paying Doctors to Ignore Patients
By PETER B. BACH

THE longstanding push-pull between Medicare and Congress has erupted again. Last week, Congress, overriding a presidential veto, canceled Medicare’s scheduled 10.6 percent cut in payment rates for doctors, and instead raised the rates 1.1 percent. But this action fails to address the problem with the Medicare payment system, which is not the amounts doctors are paid but the way their payments are calculated.

Medicare pays doctors for specific services. If a patient has a checkup that includes an X-ray, a urine analysis and a physical, Medicare pays the doctor three separate fees.

The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A01

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

Domino's Scientists Test Limits Of What Humans Will Eat

GM researches high-tech windshields

General Motors researchers are working on a windshield that combines lasers, infrared sensors and a camera to take what's happening on the road and enhance it, so ageing drivers with vision problems are able to see a little more clearly.

Though it's only in the research stage now, the technology soon will be more useful than ever. The 65 and older population in the US will nearly double in about 20 years, meaning more people will be struggling to see the road like they used to.

GM's new windshield won't improve their vision, but it will make objects stand out that could otherwise go unnoticed by an aged eye.

At the same time, the developers say the technology won't cause drivers to plow into trees. It is enhancing just a few objects that are already in a driver's view, not splashing distracting information onto the glass.

Two things turned that around. The American Medical Association used a vigorous advertising campaign against Republican senators who were blocking a vote on the bill, cowing them into retreat. And the ailing Senator Edward Kennedy made a dramatic appearance on the Senate floor to guarantee a Democratic victory, at which point Republicans started switching sides. ...The House overrode the president’s veto by a thumping 383 to 41, with 153 Republicans defying the president. The Senate vote was a convincing 70 to 26, with 21 Republicans abandoning the White House.

Welcome Rout on Medicare

The surprising thing about the intense Congressional struggle over a modest bill to improve Medicare was how quickly it turned from a cliffhanger into a rout. President Bush’s veto was easily overridden as Republicans in droves abandoned his misguided effort to help the insurance industry hold on to its large subsidies.

We hope this means that the next Congress will be emboldened to make more far-reaching reforms in Medicare to help keep the system solvent and able to provide high-quality care for older Americans.

Picture this. A guy applies for a job as a loan originator in a commercial bank. He's intelligent, personable, knowledgeable of the industry...all in all a wonderful fit for the job. He starts work, turns in the paperwork for his first loan and his boss notices (right away, too) that the loan charges no interest. When asked what the fuck is his problem he say his religion forbids him to charge interest. You think he'd make it back to his desk before being fired?

If you apply for a job, you must actually be able to do the job, and that goes beyond physical limitations. Choosing not to do the legitimate work of the organization that pays your salary is a firing offense everywhere.

Bush would change that. In a way, no surprise since the people he himself hired have proven to be remarkably inept, their greatest qualification being loyalty to the rhetoric. Makes sense he'd try to get that in place nationwide.

Abortion Proposal Sets Condition on Aid
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control.

But I was not prepared for this question. I told the surgeon I would call back with the insurance information, which forced me to call the transferring doctor. I can't remember if the child was underinsured, uninsured or was insured by the state, but it didn't matter. When I called the surgeon back, he refused to come in. His group didn't cover "those kinds" of patients.

Such is our peculiar institution called American healthcare. We have gobs of money, the best technology, plenty of specialists, and spend the most money on healthcare in the world. Despite that, a child gets left out in the cold.

When the bottom line overrides the Hippocratic Oath
As a naive pediatric resident, I couldn't believe it when the surgeon called back and said we don't treat those kinds of patients.
By Rahul K. Parikh, M.D.

Jul. 16, 2008 | I don't remember many specific patients from my days as a resident. Like all doctors in training, I was overworked, underpaid and chronically fatigued. With that, details become murky.

What I do remember, though, are certain incidents that gave me pause and made me wonder what the hell I had gotten myself into. The kinds of situations that only residents -- who are the blunt business end of America's sloppy healthcare system -- can get stuck in.

How Many Silicon Valley Startup Executives Are Hopped Up On Provigil?
Michael Arrington

Is someone you work with taking Provigil to give them an extra competitive edge? I’ve spoken with one executive who says he uses it regularly to work twenty hour days, and the buzz lately is that it’s the “entrepreneur’s drug of choice” around Silicon Valley. Over the last week two separate entrepreneurs have mentioned it casually in conversation, and one said he tried it once and loved it.

Provigil (aka Modafinil) is marketed by Cephalon in the United States and is available by prescription only. It’s only approved use in the U.S. is to treat narcolepsy, a sleeping disorder. But since the main effect of Provigil is to keep you awake and able to concentrate, a lot of people who get their hands on it use it to be able to work longer hours, even though it has not been deemed safe for that kind of use.

Bones are in a constant state of remodeling — dissolving microscopic bits of old bone, a process called resorption, and rebuilding new bone. After age 30 or so, a woman’s bones start to dissolve faster than they can be rebuilt, and after menopause she may develop thin, brittle bones that are easily broken. Bisphosphonates, including Fosamax, Procter & Gamble’s Actonel and GlaxoSmithKline’s Boniva, slow this process.

But some experts are concerned that microscopic bone cracks that result from normal wear and tear are not repaired when the bone remodeling process is suppressed. A 2001 study of beagles taking high doses of bisphosphonates found an accumulation of microscopic damage, though there was no evidence that their bones were weaker.

Drugs to Build Bones May Weaken Them
By TARA PARKER-POPE

New questions have emerged about whether long-term use of bone-building drugs for osteoporosis may actually lead to weaker bones in a small number of people who use them.

The concern rises mainly from a series of case reports showing a rare type of leg fracture that shears straight across the upper thighbone after little or no trauma. Fractures in this sturdy part of the bone typically result from car accidents, or in the elderly and frail. But the case reports show the unusual fracture pattern in people who have used bone-building drugs called bisphosphonates for five years or more.

Some patients have reported that after weeks or months of unexplained aching, their thighbones simply snapped while they were walking or standing.

Medicare now pays the private plans, on average, 13 percent more than the same services would cost through traditional Medicare. The subsidies have fueled explosive growth in the least-efficient plans, fee-for-service plans, which do little or nothing to justify their 17 percent overpayment.

This is outrageous. Instead of paying private plans less than traditional Medicare, in the belief that they could find innovative ways to cut costs and improve care, we are now paying them significantly more. The only explanation is Republicans’ ideological compulsion to provide a private option.

Medicare’s Bias

The intense struggle in Congress last week over a relatively modest Medicare reform bill has underscored a disturbing truth: many of the private plans that participate in the huge government-sponsored health insurance program for older Americans have become a far too costly drain on Medicare’s overstretched budget.

Private health plans were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s in the belief that they could reduce costs and improve care through better management. And for a while they did. But policy changes that were championed by the Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress led to exactly the opposite outcome.

"If we give fertilized eggs legal rights, abortion could be considered murder and a woman could be sent to jail for making the difficult life decision to terminate a pregnancy," said Crystal Clinkenbeard, spokeswoman for Protect Families, Protect Choice, a coalition of medical professionals, community groups and religious leaders who oppose the amendment.

The measure also could expand the reach of the law into other arenas, legal experts say. For instance, if a woman miscarries, she could be held responsible if it were found she caused it, even unintentionally. If she smoked or drank while pregnant, her behavior might be considered negligence. Damaged eggs might be eligible for monetary damages. The use of fertilized eggs at fertility clinics or in medical research labs would come into question because the disposal of unused eggs could be considered homicide.

Colorado Voters Will Be Asked When 'Personhood' Begins
By Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 13, 2008; A04

LOS ANGELES -- A proposal to define a fertilized human egg as a person will land on Colorado's ballot this November, marking the first time that the question of when life begins will go before voters anywhere in the nation.

The Human Life Amendment, also known as the personhood amendment, says the words "person" or "persons" in the state constitution should "include any human being from the moment of fertilization." If voters agreed, legal experts say, it would give fertilized eggs the same legal rights and protections to which people are entitled.

The Newshour had a little explanation of that. Short form seems to be they had a history of the AMA prepared and what came out of the files was something they want to close the door on.

Seeing how things aren't always turning out the way we'd expect, I'd like you to read Columbia Journalism Review's Memo To Health Care Reporters and the Catholic Courier's Confronting the cost of health care in connection with this article.

Democrats Gear Up New Push for Universal Health Care
By Perry Bacon Jr.

Democrats are launching an aggressive push for universal health care, fourteen years after a failed attempt on the issue resulted in political disaster.

A coalition of liberal groups that includes major labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union and the activist group MoveOn.org announced today it will spend $40 million to make health insurance a major issue in the campaign, with Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, as the one of the group's main spokespersons. The group, which has dubbed itself "Health Care for America Now!" plans to spend its money running ads in battleground states, canvassing 45 states to get people to sign petitions supporting the initiative and trying to get every member of Congress to sign a pledge to expand health insurance to all Americans.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Democratic staffers are trying to set up a structure for getting a bill through Congress next year.