While Congress seems paralyzed or, at best, willing to shrink significantly its efforts to help Americans deal with the punishing costs of care in the U.S. medical system, could federal lawmakers be confronted at the same time with more compelling evidence about the need for aggressive, not timid, action? Do beleaguered constituents need to barrage….
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D.C. area slammed hard as winter coronavirus surge blasts the U.S.
The coronavirus pandemic is tearing up the country with the Omicron variant shattering infection records and rates and this viral strain and the Delta variant overwhelming hospitals and threatening to break the already exhausted U.S. health care system. Uncertainty has returned to conversations about the pandemic’s course, as educators decide whether to return students at….
Continue ReadingU.S. has three approved boosters and is prepped to vaccinate kids
Don’t doubt the central role that vaccines are playing in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Federal officials — even as the Delta-variant surge is easing — have dominated the news by approving yet more boosters for those who have gotten the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots and announcing preparations to vaccinate kids ages….
Continue ReadingHigh-tech tools can boost blacks’ cancer warnings — and be racially biased
While technological advances may help provide crucial warnings to young men, especially those who are black, about their heightened risk of early-onset colorectal cancer, the rise of other high-tech diagnostic aids may only worsen built-in, harmful racial biases in an array of medical practices. Researchers at the University of Chicago, to their credit, have sought….
Continue ReadingTop medical journals, ob-gyns, and NFL all face tough reckoning with racism
Racial inequities roiled an array of health-related situations in recent days, showing how far the nation still must go to deal with pervasive injustices in medical systems nationwide. The reported matters include: The editor-in-chief departed a leading medical journal after one of his chief deputies, in a purported “education” session for which practitioners could earn….
Continue ReadingAlarms sounding as opioid-overdose crisis worsens, especially with fentanyl
Even as the nation sees cause for optimism in its battle against the coronavirus, our struggles against substance abuse are falling far short of what’s needed. The opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis has worsened significantly during the pandemic and experts are warning that too many of us need to cut back from excess boozing…..
Continue ReadingIs killer opioid crisis an ‘afterthought,’ as U.S. struggles with many problems?
Although the Biden Administration may be winning Americans’ approval for its battle against the coronavirus pandemic, drug abuse experts have expressed rising worry that federal efforts are lagging in the fight against a rising health menace: the resurgent opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis. While overdoses for the first time might claim 100,000 U.S. lives….
Continue ReadingSpeeding, distraction, intoxication: Why U.S. roads turned so lethal in 2020
Motorists who didn’t make new year resolutions should sign on to some lifesaving, commonsense vows: They can pledge to slow down, focus on task more, and to halt the record road carnage that happened in 2020. In the year just ended, Americans drove fewer miles than they had in recent years due to public health….
Continue ReadingWith driving and wrecks still virus limited, do insurers owe customers more?
Auto insurance companies and agents may have sent customers cards, fridge magnets, or calendars as part of their holiday cheer. But tens of millions of motorists may wish to demand more — both much more, and less. Consumer advocates say the coronavirus pandemic has curtailed driving and claims for wrecks enough still that auto insurers….
Continue ReadingAuld Lang Syne’s melancholy? This go-around it may be a tragic, viral dirge
As the nation closes out 2020 and months of a raging coronavirus pandemic, will old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind? Covid-19, unchecked, has killed at least 330,000 Americans and almost 19 million of us have been infected with the disease. Those numbers likely are underestimated. Based on still tallying “excess deaths” in….
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