Affordable Care Act Promoting the “general welfare,” as in providing affordable, quality health care in the U.S.
January 4, 2011 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 16Comment

After being sworn-in on Wednesday (1/5/11), the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives are promising to do at least two things this week: (1) read on the House floor the U.S. Constitution, and (2) repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the healthcare overhaul bill that was signed into law by President Obama in […]

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Environmental Health Worth Reading: “Chronic Lyme Disease,” Migrant Farmworkers, and China’s Pollution Data
December 24, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 3Comment

A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Patricia Callahan and Trine Tsouderos in the Chicago Tribune: Chronic Lyme disease: A dubious diagnosis (via Orac, who critiques the backlash against the article) The Economist: Migrant farm workers: Fields of tears Christina Larson in Yale Environment 360: In China, a New Transparency on Government Pollution Data […]

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Affordable Care Act Senator Sanders on the New Healthcare Law
December 23, 2010 The Pump Handle 2Comment

United States Senator Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, received this year’s Paul Wellstone Award at the Activist Dinner on 7 November in Denver, during the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Anthony Robbins presented the award “for his principled support for a universal comprehensive health care system…” Senator Sanders prepared this video […]

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Affordable Care Act Why We Need the Individual Mandate
December 14, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 20Comment

Yesterday a federal judge struck down the new healthcare law’s individual mandate, which requires everyone to have health insurance. (Actually, the mandate doesn’t apply to everyone: those who’d have to spend more than 8% of their income on coverage are exempt, as are undocumented immigrants – and if you don’t have coverage, you pay a […]

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US Healthcare System Where the Healthcare Workers Are
October 28, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 3Comment

At the Millennium Development Goal summit last month, one of the sessions addressed the issue of the global healthcare workforce. We don’t have enough healthcare workers to deliver needed care to the world’s population, and until we address this problem it’ll be next to impossible to meet the goals of reducing child mortality, improving maternal […]

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Affordable Care Act KFF Explains New Healthcare Law – In 9 Minutes, with Animation
October 7, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH

If you feel like you could use an overview of the new healthcare law – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – head over the the Kaiser Family Foundation’s website and watch their nine-minute animated video. Cokie Roberts narrates, explaining the problems the law’s designed to address and its major provisions. If you want […]

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US Healthcare System Life and Death, Quality and Quantity
August 5, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 6Comment

If you haven’t already, go read Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article “Letting Go.” As a surgeon, Gawande knows how doctors tend to death with terminally ill patients, both because of their training and their ordinary human tendencies. As a writer, he knows how to weave together personal stories and explanations into a seamless portrait of […]

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US Healthcare System Chipping Away at Healthcare Costs – or Not
July 20, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 10Comment

Last year, Atul Gawande wrote an interesting New Yorker piece that compares present-day efforts to control healthcare costs with early 20th-century efforts to increase US farming productivity. The quest for more farming productivity succeeded not because of any grand, sweeping reform, he explains, but because the government, through the USDA, invested in pilot programs, scientific […]

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US Healthcare System Hard Choices Made Harder by the Healthcare System
June 24, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH

If you haven’t already, go read Katy Butler’s powerful New York Times Magazine piece about her aging father’s years of decline and the hard decisions she and her mother had to make about his care. Butler’s father suffered a stroke at age 79, and she writes of its effect:

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