Conservative Republicans of Texas target Texas Advance Directives Act
The Conservative Republicans of Texas target the Texas Advance Directives Act in their Resolutions for 2016 Republican Precinct Conventions.
REPEAL & REPLACE PART OF THE TEXAS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES ACT
WHEREAS, every year in Texas, an unreported number of vulnerable patients are victims of the unethical, unconstitutional, and unprecedented Ethics Committee process due to the Texas Advance Directives Act; and
WHEREAS, Section 166.046 of the Texas Health and Safety Code enables physicians and hospitals to unilaterally withhold or withdraw a patient’s Life-Sustaining Treatment at the expiration of ten days against the ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 4, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
Conservative Republicans of Texas Target the Texas Advance Directives Act
The Conservative Republicans of Texas target the Texas Advance Directives Act in their Resolutions for 2016 Republican Precinct Conventions.
REPEAL & REPLACE PART OF THE TEXAS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES ACT
WHEREAS, every year in Texas, an unreported number of vulnerable patients are victims of the unethical, unconstitutional, and unprecedented Ethics Committee process due to the Texas Advance Directives Act; and
WHEREAS, Section 166.046 of the Texas Health and Safety Code enables physicians and hospitals to unilaterally withhold or withdraw a patient’s Life-Sustaining Treatment at the expiration of ten days against the ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 4, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
"The Libertarian Mind" in the New York Times
The writer Lionel Shriver, best known for her novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, cites The Libertarian Mind in a New York Times column today, about the difficulty of being a “disenfranchised…socially progressive economic conservative.” Shriver writes:
Yet whether it’s “leftist” or “rightist,” my catechism is consistent. The rubric to which those positions hew — we should be free to do whatever doesn’t impinge on the rights of others — forms the conceptual backbone of the United States. The Constitution is libertarian. To the extent that the unamended Constitution was flawed, it was more rigorous app...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
An Update on the Nomination of FDA Commissioner Robert Califf
An increasing number of senators are threatening to block Dr. Robert Califf's nomination to be the next Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The story illustrates an unusual coalition of right and left-leaning members of the Senate, and common refrains about "industry ties" in government and medicine. Ultimately, arcane Senate rules allow the entire process to be stalled by these individual members of the body.
The U.S. Senate: Where things go to die (slowly)
Members threatening to block Califf's nomination include Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He cited Califf's ties to the pharmaceutical indu...
Source: Policy and Medicine - February 9, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Dying to Get an Education
Public policy and public health efforts are underway to help assure that people can be healthy where they live, work, and play. As part of providing education, schools are supposed to protect the health and safety of students. Various government and non-government organizations (NGOs) offer resources, toolkits and evidence-based resources to help school districts, schools, and school personnel deal with health emergencies, such as life threatening conditions like asthma. Guidelines indicate that schools should have: a policy or rule that allows students to carry and use their own asthma medicines; written emergen...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - January 27, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Children Patients' Rights Policy Source Type: blogs
Should All Flyers Go First Class?
Anyone who flies, or, at least, anyone who isn’t rich who flies, probably wishes he or she had more leg room. Going “cattle class” isn’t fun. But for most people it still is better than not going. Which for most travelers is the real alternative.
For decades the Civil Aeronautics Board regulated airfares. Airlines competed on service rather than price. Business travelers, whose companies paid the bill, enjoyed uncrowded luxury in the air.
It wasn’t as grand for anyone on a budget. You were more likely to drive, especially if you had a family.
Deregulation of the airlines transformed flying. Discount airlines emer...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 26, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Should Companies Invest In a Chief Health Officer?
This study builds on other studies that used the CHAA as well as other wellness award programs including Mercer’s HERO Employee Health Management Best Practices Scorecard and the C. Everett Koop National Health Award.
Now that’s total shareholder return.
In another demonstration of why peer-review is so important, Dr. Fabius and his colleagues correctly point out that correlation is not the same as causation. As a result, there is no evidence that importing wellness programs into other companies will translate into better stock performance. In addition, elementary statistics tells us that corporate wellness a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Health Law Events at AALS 2016
This article identifies a
potential backdoor solution to this problem — recent health care reforms that
encourage health care providers to move beyond traditional medicine and give
greater attention to the social determinants of poor health. Unfortunately,
providers lack the incentives and capacity to independently address many of the
root causes of poor health. Effecting far-reaching changes in the social
determinants of health instead will require providers to join forces with other
sectors across a broad range of initiatives designed to improve the
population’s health.
Elizabeth Y. McCuskey
Body of Preem...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - January 2, 2016 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
Electronic Health Record Data Shows Hoverboard Health Risks Zipping Higher
By HANNAH GALVIN, MD
When I was 10, Marty McFly rode a hoverboard through a 2015 Hill Valley’s Courthouse Square, and I knew what I wanted from Santa that year. Needless to say, I was disappointed that Christmas morning in ’89.
Fast forward to the real 2015, and a tattooed woman in her early 20’s has maneuvered her way off the DC Red Line and onto the escalator in front of me riding some kind of self-powered two-wheeled object that looks like a disembodied Segway. It has a blue neon underglow that gives it the appearance of floating. My calves ache in sympathy as she shuffles to maintain her balance on our long asc...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 18, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Simon Nath Tags: THCB Hannah Galvin Source Type: blogs
Electronic Health Record Data Shows Reports of Hoverboard Risks Zipping Higher
By HANNAH GALVIN, MD
When I was 10, Marty McFly rode a hoverboard through a 2015 Hill Valley’s Courthouse Square, and I knew what I wanted from Santa that year. Needless to say, I was disappointed that Christmas morning in ’89.
Fast forward to the real 2015, and a tattooed woman in her early 20’s has maneuvered her way off the DC Red Line and onto the escalator in front of me riding some kind of self-powered two-wheeled object that looks like a disembodied Segway. It has a blue neon underglow that gives it the appearance of floating. My calves ache in sympathy as she shuffles to maintain her balance on our long asc...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 18, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Simon Nath Tags: THCB Hannah Galvin Source Type: blogs
The Quixotic Nurse
As a nurse writer and blogger, I often use metaphor as a way to express deeper ideas about nursing and healthcare. In the past, I've explored the myths of Sisyphus and Hercules as they relate to nurses and the nursing profession, and my nature continues to point me towards metaphor as a tool for understanding. I've recently been considering the figure of Don Quixote as another metaphor related to our often beleaguered profession; although much has been written about Quixote and the author Miguel Cervantes, I don't believe anything has been written about the potentially quixotic nature of nurses. So, my friends, I give you ...
Source: Digital Doorway - December 1, 2015 Category: Nursing Tags: Don Quixote Erin Brockovich Florence Nightingale health care healthcare delivery healthcare policy Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King nurse nurse bullying nurses nursing Renee Thompson Source Type: blogs
What Revolving Door? - An Unprecedented Endorsement of a Political Appointment by the "Gold Standard" Medical Journal
An Unprecedented Endorsement It's deja vu all over again. In the spring of 2015, the New England Journal, the most prestigious US medical journal, published a remarkable series of opinion pieces extrolling physician-industry collaborations, and minimizing the significance of resulting conflicts of interest. More remarkable was the extent that the articles' argument were bolstered by logical fallacies (look here).Doubling down, the New England Journal of Medicine appeared to make its first ever endorsement of a nominee for federal office. On October 28, 2015, the NEJM published an editorial with the ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - November 19, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: conflicts of interest FDA medical journals NEJM New England Journal of Medicine revolving doors Source Type: blogs
Adding a Lawyer to the Health Care Team: Addressing Social Determinants through Medical-Legal Partnerships
By: Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler, JD, MA, assistant professor of family medicine, Warren Alpert Medical School, and assistant professor of health services, policy and practice, School of Public Health, Brown University
As a lawyer who has taught medical students for many years about the role of law and policy in health disparities and the social determinants of health, I am well acquainted with the question, “but what can I do about it?” What can a doctor do if a patient is being evicted or has her utilities shut off, lives in a house with mold that is exacerbating her child’s asthma, or is financially dependent on an abusi...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - November 16, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Guest Author Tags: Featured Guest Perspective graduate medical education interprofessional education medical-legal partnership social determinants undergraduate medical education Source Type: blogs
When Are Laws Strictly Enforced? Criminal Justice, Housing Quality, And Public Health
At the end of a summer punctuated by media coverage of the deaths of African-American men and women at the hands of law enforcement, I passed a sign on the highway that struck me as ironic. The sign simply read: Laws Strictly Enforced. The sign was presumably intended to warn drivers that, should they speed, law enforcement would be there to enforce the speed limit and give them a ticket.
The sign struck me as interesting for two reasons. First, it made me recall that many of the offenses that were the trigger for law enforcement action in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and Sandra Bland involved “...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - November 5, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Elizabeth Tobin Tyler Tags: Costs and Spending Equity and Disparities Featured Long-term Services and Supports Population Health Public Health asthma broken windows policing public housing safe housing laws Social Determinants of Health Source Type: blogs
District Court Grants Permanent Injunction Against Device Maker
On Wednesday October 7, a federal judge in South Dakota granted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a permanent injunction against 2035 Inc. and Robert “Larry” Lytle, doing business as QLasers PMA and 2035 PMA. Interestingly, despite the “PMA” in the business name, the company had not in fact received PMA, or pre-market approval, from FDA before distributing their low-level laser devices. As a result, the government alleged that the devices are adulterated and misbranded within the meaning of the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic (FD&C) Act.
According to the complaint for injunction filed on Oct. 21,...
Source: Policy and Medicine - October 13, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Policy and Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
