healthcare

Too Sick to Work? Need Health Care? Take a Number

WASHINGTON - Master toolmaker John McClain built machine parts with details so small they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Then a lump on his neck turned out to be cancer.

Shalonda Frederick managed a bakery, and decorated cakes for special occasions. One day her face and hands, and her arms and legs, started clenching up. Then she fell off a ladder at work. It turned out to be multiple sclerosis.

McClain, 56, and Frederick, 33, are unlucky enough to have gotten seriously ill in their most productive years. Theirs is a daily struggle against life-changing circumstances.

Posted in healthcare

There's No Place Like Home for The Holidays, Until There is No Home

A little box arrived from Chicago last week to my temporary digs here in Washington, DC. Inside were some of the trinkets of Christmases long past. Ornaments that used to hang on trees surrounded by mounds of gifts, plush Mickey Mouse stockings I used to fill with fruit and candy and little toys when my sons were younger, and a candle holder - absent the candle, of course, which had long since been burned on a holiday table brimming with food and with good cheer.

Posted in foreclosures, healthcare

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 22, 2008
12:46 PM

CONTACT: Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
In Cambridge, Massachusetts
Physicians for Human Rights
Jonathan Hutson (English) +1-857-919-5130 (mobile)
jhutson [at] phrusa [dot] org

In New York
Human Rights Watch
Joe Amon (English)
+1-212-216-1286; 1-917-519-8930 (mobile)
Rebecca Schleifer (English)
+1-212-216-1273; + 1-646-331 0324 (mobile)

Hadi Ghaemi
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran
+1-917-669-5996 (mobile)
hadighaemi [at] iranhumanrights [dot] org

Margaret Salmon, MD/MPH
The Harvard Friends of Alaeis
+1-617-460-4084
msalmon [at] llu [dot] edu
skype: msalmonmd

Iran Asked to Free AIDS Doctors Held for Six Months on Illegitimate Charges

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - December 22 - On the sixth-month anniversary of Iran's detention of Dr. Arash Alaei and Dr. Kamiar Alaei—Iranian brothers who are known worldwide as HIV/AIDS physicians—international NGOs, academic institutions, and medical leaders from across the globe are asking Iran to free them immediately.

The doctors have been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since late June 2008. They were indicted this month on charges of communicating with an "enemy government" according to their attorney, Masoud Shafie.

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Posted in healthcare, Human Rights, Iran

A Big Pill for Healthcare to Swallow

President-Elect Obama has promised a system of universal healthcare, but enacting one will be far more difficult than it should be. Even with change coming to America, drug companies and other high-spending special interests will keep buying their way onto Capitol Hill if other things don't change first.

Posted in healthcare

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 22, 2008
9:39 AM

CONTACT: Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

'Top Ten' Humanitarian Crises Reveal Growing Insecurity, Neglected Health Needs

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Releases 11th Annual List

NEW YORK - December 22 - Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the "Top Ten" humanitarian crises.

The report underscores major difficulties in bringing assistance to people affected by conflict.

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Posted in healthcare

New Rule for Health Providers Stirs Objections

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, in its final days, issued a federal rule Thursday reinforcing protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions and other procedures because of religious or moral objections.

Critics say the protections are so broad they limit a patient's right to get care and accurate information. For example, they fear the rule could make it possible for a pharmacy clerk to refuse to sell birth control pills without ramifications from an employer.

Posted in after bush, healthcare, reproductive rights

Looking After Pockets, Not Patients

BAQUBA, Iraq - A nurse at Baquba General Hospital asked Ahmed Ali, who co-authored this report, for a bribe to look after his sick baby. It was hardly an exceptional demand. Patients around Iraq have begun commonly to speak of the need to bribe medical staff to get some form of care.

"Nurses in Iraqi hospitals are no angels of mercy," Falah Najim, who was a patient at the main hospital in Baquba told IPS. "They look after their pockets, not the patient."

Posted in healthcare, War/Empire, Iraq

There Is A Cure

The report last week that the U.S. economy lost nearly 2 million jobs this year, and 533,000 jobs in November alone, sent shudders through our nation's households. That's the biggest one-month plunge in jobs in 34 years. "Horrendous" was how one economist put it, while others said the number of unemployed, and underemployed, could easily double over the next year.

Posted in healthcare, singlepayer

Detroit's Problem: It's Health Care, not the Union

The Senate's failure to pass the bailout of the U.S. auto industry strikes a big blow at one of labor's last stands in manufacturing in the U.S.

What's at stake? According to the bill: 355,000 workers in the U.S. directly employed by the automobile industry; 4,500,000 employed in related industries (the auto industry has the highest job creation multiplier effect of any industry); 1,000,000 retirees (with pensions and health care benefits).

Posted in auto bailout, healthcare

How the American Healthcare System Got That Way

As Americans respond to President-elect Obama call for town hall meetings on reform the American health care system, an understanding of how that system came to be the way it is can be crucial for figuring out how to fix it.

The American health care system is unique because for most of us it is tied to our jobs rather than to our government. For many Americans the system seems natural, but few know that it originated, not as a well thought out plan to provide for Americans' health, but as a way to circumvent a quirk in wartime wage regulations that had nothing to do with health.

Posted in healthcare