Health in the news
Did the U.S. overreact to the H1N1 swine flu?
Health experts interviewed by Washington Post reporter Rob Stein say they are generally pleased with the response of state and federal health agencies to early reports out of Mexico of a new flu virus that was killing an alarming number of young, healthy adults.
“If what was being reported in Mexico played out in the United States and elsewhere, this was a potentially serious epidemic that was getting underway,” Thomas V. Inglesby, deputy director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh told Stein. “We had to respond quickly.”
The virus now appears to much less dangerous, allowing health officials to “dial back” their warnings, writes Stein, but experts warn we’re not done with this virus.
“We’re dancing with this virus right now, and no one knows what will be the next step that the virus will take,” Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota told Stein. “All of us have to understand that we are not done with this dance yet — not by a long shot.”
- To learn more read Rob Stein’s piece: Viral Threat Emerged in a Ready World
What is “Socialized Medicine”?
Critics of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform proposals often call his plans “socialized medicine”. But what does that mean?
In the New York Times Economix blog, Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt argues that the critics are confusing social health insurance and socialism.
Socialized medicine, he writes, refers to a health system in which the government owns and operates both the financing and delivery of health care.
Social health insurance is a much broader term covering systems in which individuals contribute to a insurance plan either by taxes or by paying premiums based on their ability to pay, rather than how sick they are.
“In principle, one could have a social insurance with 100 percent private for-profit delivery facilities,” writes Prof. Reinhardt.
Under private commercial insurance such as most of us have here in the U.S., he writes, an individual’s premium generally reflects his or her health status, with the older and sicker paying more.
- To learn more read Prof. Reinhardt’s blog: What is ‘Socialized Medicine’: A Taxonomy of Health Care Systems.
Mixed review for HBO’s four-part documentary “The Alzheimer’s Project”
New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley gives HBO’s four-part documentary series “The Alzheimer’s Project” a mixed review in today’s paper.
The series is “sober” and “deeply affecting”, she writes, but perhaps too optimistic about the prospects for effective treatments.
The “collective exuberance” of the filmmakers and the scientists they interview, she writes, “is so persuasive that viewers have to remind themselves that there is as yet no way to prevent the disease or even slow its progress.”
“And that’s a problem. It suggests that “The Alzheimer’s Project” comes with an implicit agenda of morale boosting—and fund-raising—that could compromise a balanced understanding of this frightening and complicated disease.”
The first of the series will be broadcast Sunday night at 9 Seattle time.
- To learn more read Alessandra Stanley’s review: The Disease That Steals Your Self.
Category: Alzheimer's Disease, Health Insurance, Health-care Policy, Influenza, Public Health
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