Although big, rich hospitals and their sprawling campuses jammed with shiny new buildings may be reaching a point where they’re unsustainable for competitive cost, safety, and efficiency reasons, a rising health care alternative already may be hitting its own major woes that can’t be ignored. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times have put up….
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Senate report assails Big Pharma for payments to patient groups for opioid-friendly messaging
A U.S. Senate Committee has ripped Big Pharma for making millions of dollars in pernicious payments to patient advocacy groups, so they could legitimize and assist in promoting powerful prescription painkillers, a practice that investigators say helped fuel the opioid drug abuse epidemic. The committee report says: Patient advocacy organizations and professional societies play a….
Continue ReadingBig Pharma firm, under fire in drug abuse epidemic, scales back opioid’s hype
Purdue Pharma, which built a multi-billion-dollar family empire, in part, by overcoming doctors’ resistance to prescribing powerful painkillers like its own powerhouse OxyContin, has decided to curb its quarter-century of aggressive and controversial drug marketing — efforts that critics and lawsuits say helped fuel the nation’s opioid drug abuse epidemic. The company has said that….
Continue ReadingHow bad’s the opioid crisis? It may curb purchases of familiar diarrhea remedy
The opioid epidemic has become so pernicious that it can be exhausting to even try to see its expansive harms. But it’s crucial to keep confronting the many ways this lethal scourge affects Americans and their lives, if only to hope that politicians, policy-makers, doctors, hospitals, and many others get off their duffs and do….
Continue ReadingAs flu season rages, please get vaccinated and take other precautions
The flu season’s roaring across the country. It’s a bad one, with the H3N2 strain afflicting millions with a severe form of illness — which also has been deadly, notably for the old and young. If you haven’t done so, consider getting a flu shot, asap. The flu shot this year may be less than….
Continue ReadingVegas shooting victims finding tough road to recovery from mass tragedy
When illness, accidents, and natural- or man-made calamities strike, victims discover in their long slog to recovery that our health insurance system only aggravates their pain and anxiety. That’s a painful lesson that hundreds of Americans will keep struggling with in 2018, months after a madman rained gunfire from high-powered rifles down into a Las….
Continue ReadingAs opioid crisis worsens, fentanyl is killing African Americans in DC & Baltimore
2017 ends with yet more grim news about the nation’s opioid drug epidemic — not only that its toll keeps rising, it now is afflicting African Americans as never before. They had been less harmed by this crisis but the scourge is spreading to them, notably in spots like the District of Columbia and Baltimore…..
Continue ReadingIt’s not a stretch: Avoid those over-use boo-boos, older yogis are warned
For seniors who may be rushing to squeeze in a few more pretzel-twisting sessions to ease their stress from a hectic holiday season, this is a gentle reminder: Take it easy with the yoga. It can be good for you, but don’t overdo it or you may hurt yourself. The Washington Post reported that the….
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 ReadingAre smart phones & e-devices putting teen-aged girls in harm’s way?
Teen-aged girls are turning up in increased numbers for emergency treatment at hospitals because they have cut, burned, poisoned, or otherwise tried to harm themselves. This disturbing trend may be linked to the obsession by the young, especially girls ages 10 to 14, with smart phones and their aggressive online, but weak real world, social….
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