by Kim Krisberg Broccoli. A nutritious green veggie of the cabbage family? Or a symbol of the federal government’s over-reaching power grab? Like most things in life, it all depends on your perspective. I’ve been thinking about that word — broccoli — since last month’s Supreme Court hearings on the constitutionality of provisions within the […]
Affordable Care Act
Broccoli, Coercion, and Severability: Three days of SCOTUS arguments on the Affordable Care Act
Unless they’ve deviated from their normal procedure, the Supreme Court justices have now decided on how they’ll rule on the Affordable Care Act – but, as the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes points out, we’ll have to wait until late June to hear their verdict. In the meantime, this is a good opportunity to recap the […]
Friday will be the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, and there’s plenty of discussion about the law’s impacts and the upcoming Supreme Court oral arguments. While many of the law’s provisions won’t take effect until 2014, it’s already having an impact on some aspects of health insurance. I described several […]
US Healthcare System
Risking their health while caring for others: Reproductive health hazards of germ-killers
by Elizabeth Grossman Nurses face many hazards on the job, and one that clearly demands more detailed analysis than it’s received to date is the effect of occupational chemical exposures on nurses’ reproductive health. A recent study by researchers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Harvard School of Public Health, and […]
Back in December, the Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division published a proposed rule that would extend minimum-wage and overtime pay protections to the home care workers who assist elderly and disabled patients with their daily needs. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that nonexempt workers be paid minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour) […]
Everyone should read the personal story by Kevin Zelnio, a marine biologist and blogger at EvoEcoLab, about his son’s recent medical emergency. Having a six-year-old child whose flulike symptoms turn into a struggle to breathe must be scary enough — but this family’s troubles are compounded by not having health insurance. Zelnio is self-employed, and […]
I wrote last month about the role of chronic diseases in healthcare-cost growth, so I was excited to see a new report from the Institute of Medicine called Living Well with Chronic Illness: A Call for Public Health Action. When I think of chronic illness, diabetes and heart disease are what leap to my mind […]
by Kim Krisberg Joy Jay has the sweetest Southern accent you’ll ever hear. It’s the kind of accent that makes her news about the state of mental health services in South Carolina harder to hear than usual. “Mental health has taken some of the biggest (funding) cuts of any agency in the state,” said Jay, […]
During his State of the Union address, President Obama spent more time talking about education than about healthcare, which he mentioned only passing. The two are connected, though, as a response from Dean Dad at Confessions of a Community College Dean reminds us: In reference to yesterday’s post about cost (among other things), a commenter […]
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released some disappointing news: several demonstration projects aiming to contain growth in healthcare spending are not showing cost savings. Specifically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have been focusing on programs involving either disease management and care coordination or value-based payment systems for the fee-for-service Medicare population. A […]