Many Things

According to this story in the South Florida Business Journal , employer-sponsored family health insurance premiums are $13,375 per year, with employees paying $3,515 and employers paying $9,860, on average. This is just one cost of the status quo health care system in the US. God, no wonder the insurance execs are making salaries in the tens of millions a year. This is obscene and morally wrong. Shared via AddThis

I am very pleased that the public is behind Obama on this. Many in both parties in Congress (who owe lots of money to the insurance and pharma lobbyists) want to scuttle the public option. I hope this poll will push the public option over the finish line in Congress. Call your Representatives and Senators...please. In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health - NYTimes.com

Here are a few facts about health care in the US that I recorded while watching a short segment on health care on CNN : France spends $3449 per person per year on health care. The United Kingdom spends $2760 per person per year on health care. Canada spends $3678 per person per year on health care. The United States spends $6714 per person per year on health care. Do we get our money's worth for paying so much extra? You decide: The US ranks 50th in the world in life expectancy. The US ranks 44th in the world in infant mortality. We are spending more on health care partly due to the administrative costs of having so many health care plans. Americans also go to specialists more, which adds to costs. There is more emphasis on prevention in other countries, such as Canada, which reduces the need for health care. I could go on, but these are just the facts I recorded from the short segment. Obviously, there are other reasons for our high costs in the US.

I've advocated for a universal single-payer health care system for years. It is the only system that can reign in health care costs because it eliminates profit from the equation. Therein lies the reason it will not pass. Even if the Democrats held well more than a 60-vote majority in the Senate, no such bill would pass. Every Republican in the Senate has gone on record to oppose an expansion of the Medicare system to cover everyone, even a gradual expansion that would phase in different demographic groups over time. Many Democrats would join the Party of No on such a vote. But it will never come to a vote. Few Democrats really want to go on record against universal health care. It angers us liberals and progressives in the party. They won't bring it up for a vote. The public option was not even brought up in hearings before the Senate Finance Committee. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told leading advocates of a government-financed health care system tha...

I just had surgery last Friday. I'm doing fine, but I had a scare. I woke up at 5:30 AM with what felt like stomach acid pain in my stomach. I had no antacids in the house. I was not nauseous. I did not have diarrhea. The pain grew as the morning went on. I had to make a move. I decided I did not want to drive the 25 miles to Duluth to my GP's office. It was a Friday in Atlanta on the cusp of Memorial Day weekend. What a drive that would be. Instead, I decided to stop by Rite-Aid and get some Tums. See if that helped. If not, then I would drive a couple of miles to a nearby Urgent Care clinic. Tums did not help. The MD at the clinic wasn't sure what was wrong. He said it was either my gall bladder or bad gas. He sent me for an ultrasound and told me to go to the emergency room by Saturday if I was not better. He clearly didn't understand how bad the pain was. After a short drive and about an hour wait, I had my ultrasound. The tech told me it was my gall bladder. She ga...

Tomorrow, the Nanotech Conference and Expo 2009 opens in Houston. Session tracks include: Fabrication, Characterization & Tools Advanced Materials Electronics & Microsystems Medical & Biotech Energy & Environment Business & Initiatives I've been interested in nanotechnology for several years now, and one of the more hopeful applications is in the field of cancer treatment and prevention. Here is an excerpt from the synopsis of the cancer nanotechnology sessions: Nanotechnology has the potential to have a revolutionary impact on cancer diagnosis and therapy.... For breast cancer, for instance, the goal of molecular imaging is to be able to accurately diagnose when the tumor mass has approximately 100-1000 cells, as opposed to the current techniques like mammography, which require more than a million cells for accurate clinical diagnosis. In cancer therapy, targeting and localized delivery are the key challenges. To wage an effective war against cancer...

Here is news of a breakthrough cure for the most common age-related blindness in humans. I believe that this is just the beginning of many more cures and therapies coming out of stem cell research. Notice that this cure comes out of the UK, where such research was not put on hold for eight years because of blind political ideology (pun intended). British scientists have developed the world’s first stem cell therapy to cure the most common cause of blindness. Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years’ time. The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. It was pioneered by scientists and surgeons from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital. This week Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical research company, will announce its financial backing to bring the therapy to patients. The treatment will tack...

My MD put me on 20 mg Crestor over a year ago. My cholesterol at the time was about 220 with a bad ratio of bad and good cholesterol. Within nine months, my cholesterol was down to 100 with a much improved ratio. He now has me split the pills and take only 10 mg a day. I'm a believer. People with low cholesterol and no big risk for heart disease dramatically lowered their chances of dying or having a heart attack if they took the cholesterol pill Crestor, a large study found. The results, reported Sunday at an American Heart Association conference, were hailed as a watershed event in heart disease prevention. Doctors said the study might lead millions of more people, as many as 7 million more in the U.S. alone, to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, sold as Crestor, Lipitor, Zocor or in generic form. [ CBS ]

Given all the events going on around us, this may seem trivial. However, you have to remember that I am over 60, so some of what comes out of my mouth has to do with health and ailments. That being said, here is a posting about fingernails, or really just a thumbnail. When I was young, I injured my right thumbnail while weightlifting. I don't remember if it eventually fell off, but I know I've had a "bump" and a vertical ridge in the middle of it for years. In my mid-50s, my fingernails started to grow thinner and the thumbnail in question started to split at the end. I had to keep the nail clipped very closely or I would have splitting problems. My doctor recommended certain vitamin combinations that he said would help, but I already take a large number of vitamins and other supplements. I have for years. I had already been taking those vitamins/supplements, but I did increase the ones he suggested. Before you ask, I don't remember for sure the ones he recommende...