Even as the nation enters an even scarier phase in its battle against the raging opioid abuse epidemic, new and sterner warnings are flying about antidepressants. The costs of these powerful drugs add up, as does the toll of depression and its care. Users say antidepressants are a nightmare to get off of. And medical….
Continue ReadingEnd of Life
Why are doctors operating, needlessly and so often, on frail seniors?
Although patient advocates long have pressed Big Medicine to eliminate unnecessary care — waste in the health care system that some experts estimate adds as much as $765 billion annually in needless costs — it may be past due for a public condemnation of a notably extreme example of this practice: The all too frequent,….
Continue ReadingUnacceptable, still: Nursing homes turning 180,000 seniors into drug zombies
Imagine if Uncle Sam permitted everyone who lives in Newport News, Va., or maybe Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to be chemically restrained, drugged with powerful medications so they fell, day and night, into a speechless stupor. Now, further envision the furor if these 180,000 souls and their families each were forced to pay as much as….
Continue ReadingDoes modern medicine give patients with major brain trauma really fair care?
Nick Tullier once was a handsome, strapping sheriff’s deputy in Baton Rouge, La. Then, in a blink, he and five others were gunned down by a former Marine and black separatist who had come from Missouri to Louisiana to kill cops. Tullier was one of three deputies who survived the attack. What happened next to….
Continue ReadingNursing home residents too often abused, evicted, at risk in natural disasters
With more than 10,000 boomers retiring each day and more seniors ending up at some point in their lives in nursing homes, regulators need to step up their oversight of elder care facilities. But there’s disturbing information they’re failing at this crucial task, allowing terrible abuses of older Americans who also may be evicted unfairly….
Continue ReadingProfiteers debasing hospice care, insulting dead with body parts trafficking
Although countless doctors and nurses put in untold blood, sweat, and tears to provide quality care to their patients, health care profiteers can undo these good works in an instant with shameful plundering. Here is a roundup from multiple fronts. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service deserves credit for its painful reporting on the….
Continue ReadingNursing homes, where more of us will go, fail to properly report abuse cases
With more Americans than previously thought needing care in the nation’s nursing homes, will more of us start to pay greater attention to the unacceptable and under-reported elder abuse occurring there? And with calamities like Hurricane Harvey fresh in mind, will more sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, and other friends and loved ones take….
Continue ReadingRavages of opioid drug abuse epidemic worsen, grow ever more complex
The myriad problems tied to the nation’s opioid drug abuse epidemic seem only to worsen and grow more complex by the day. They are, recent news reports say: contributing to new outbreaks of syphilis, a destructive and deadly sexually transmitted disease that is tough to contain and whose cases had dwindled until fairly recently; leading….
Continue ReadingBetter nursing home oversight needed for dangerous facilities
Federal regulators need to ramp up their oversight of nursing homes, big time, with recent news reports and studies finding persistent abuses of elderly patients, including during crackdowns on problem operators, and facilities failing to care for vulnerable charges so they don’t lapse into emergency or hospital care. Jordan Rau and the independent Kaiser Health….
Continue ReadingIsn’t it about time that doctors & hospitals understood this about patients?
Your time is precious, and when you are a patient, you may feel it’s more so, especially if you’re ill or even in the end stage of your life. So why do health care providers keep us waiting, or worse, why must doctors and hospitals act downright oblivious to how valuable our time might be….
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