Right on wrong

Dylan Matthews blogs for Ezra Klein about the Samuelson column previously mentioned on this humble blog. There’s lots more facts than I offered, but then he doesn’t address the rights argument. I should point out as a caveat to my post that things are not rights simply because they make economic sense, just as rights [...]

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She has a dream

Jennifer Jaff is kicking ass on the NICIAW radio program. She’s right: this is a civil rights issue. It would be worth listening to the show after the fact, even if the audio quality isn’t great.

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What’s missing?

Sarah Palin on health care, per the WaPo: “We will allow competition,” she said. “Alaskans want health care in the hands of doctors, not lobbyists and lawyers.” I don’t want lobbyists and lawyers interfering in my health care, but should it really be “in the hands of doctors”? Isn’t there someone more important, more crucial [...]

Tags: pols

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Invisibility, again

Mostly for the benefit of Google, I will point out that National Invisible Chronic Illness Week begins today. I plan to participate in Wednesday’s noon session with Jennifer Jaff, who it turns out has a blog. This is very cool; of all the people in the world who should be blogging, Jennifer is pretty near [...]

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Wrong on right

Robert Samuelson is wrong about this: What we all want for ourselves and our families—access to unlimited care paid for by someone else—may be ruinous for us as a society. But maybe right about this: Sensible limits must somehow be imposed. I don’t want unlimited care paid for by someone else. In any system of [...]

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Invisibility would be way better

National Invisible Chronic Illness Week is this week. It is not a national week the way, say, National Walking Week is a national week; no bill has passed the Congress designating it as such. Instead NICIW was organized by Rest Ministries, which I have never heard of, and Advocacy For Patients with Chronic Illness, which [...]

Tags: ills

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It’s always raining at the FDA

A couple of items discovered on the internets this evening… …one quite urgent: FDA demands tougher warnings on immunosuppressive drugs The drugs – Remicade, Humira, Tysabri, and Cimzia – are anti-TNF biomeds. They are widely prescribed for arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and other conditions, but can leave users susecptible to potentially deadly histoplasmosis infections. I’ve taken [...]

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Chattering masses

Apparently this one of 13.6 million medical blogs…. I still don’t know of any doing what I claim (or pretend) to be doing. That doesn’t mean they’re not out there–just that I don’t know about them.

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COBRA!

I submitted my letter of resignation yesterday, so that I can take the new, no-benefits position. That’s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that my COBRA payments should be a couple hundred dollars less than I expected. With the modest increase in pay, I can afford almost six months of health insurance without a [...]

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Scarcity

This, from Kevin, M.D.: People can criticize “high” physician salaries all they want, but how does that help the new Medicare patient desperately trying to find a primary care physician? If we’re talking about a shortage of primary medical care providers, then high physician salaries are directly relevant. As far as I know, state medical [...]

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