Newest Test Scores are Bad News for Centralized Education, Common Core
This morning I read an op-ed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin tackling the chasm between what it takes to enroll in college and how ready for college students actually are. It is a yawning gap, and Holtz-Eakin rightly laments it. But then he pulls the ol’, “Common Core is a high standard,” and suggests that it will bridge the college prep divide. He even writes that the Core has been “shown” to be “effective.”
Not only has there been no meaningful evidence of the Core’s effectiveness, but right after I read Holtz-Eakins’ piece I saw that the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress scores had come out...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 27, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
“In 2013, 2 of @yaelmtzv’s brothers-in-law disappeared in...
"In 2013, 2 of @yaelmtzv's brothers-in-law disappeared in Iguala, Mexico. The family's heartbreak was compounded when a 3rd brother died in jail while awaiting trial on drug charges. "I wanted to show the emotional and psychological fractures that come with such losses," said. @yaelmtzv, who is pictured here with his wife, Lucero. "There is fear and impotence because you can't get an answer." In the state of Guerrero and elsewhere in Mexico, @yaelmtzv's family is not alone in their grief. To relate his family's experiences about what has been convulsing his country, @yaelmtzv produced a series of photographs that are quiet...
Source: Kidney Notes - April 2, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
FDA Announces Labeling Changes for Immediate Release Opioid Medications
The United States Food and Drug Administration has announced new required class-wide safety labeling changes for immediate-release (IR) opioid pain medication. Included in the changes is a new boxed warning about the serious risks of misuse, abuse, addiction, overdose, and death.
The updated indication clarifies that because of those risks, IR opioids should be reserved for pain severe enough to require opioid treatment and for which alternative treatment options, such as non-opioid analgesics or opioid combination products, are inadequate or not tolerated. Additionally, the dosing information provides clarity to previou...
Source: Policy and Medicine - March 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Why is erectile dysfunction so politically impotent?
It is open season on erectile dysfunction. First, a politician in South Carolina introduced a bill to make it hard to get Viagra and then a politician in Kentucky. If the bills pass, they will hold patients with erectile dysfunction hostage to unrelated agendas. You might think that erections would be as politically untouchable as guns. After all, erections are nearly as popular as they are common. So how can erectile dysfunction be politically impotent?
Our society has a bipolar relationship to erections. It is so extremely bipolar that it leaves little room for authentic conversation: Real men, who are neither studs nor ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 23, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Arnon Krongrad, MD and Kimberly Langer Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 135
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 135
Question 1
What was the cause for the most fatalities at Pearl Harbour?
+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answer
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NOT Thiopental (but the initial trauma or delayed hemorrhagic shock)
It has been a popular myth that Thiopental caused more deaths than the initial trauma but of the 344 patients admitted to the Tripler Army Hospi...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - February 12, 2016 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five Aluminium Anaesthetics Buddy Ebsen FFFF Heidelberg Electric Belt impotence Kehr's sign pearl harbour Princess Diana pulmonary vein splenic rupture thiopental thoracotomy Source Type: blogs
This Is Not A Disruptive Blog Post
By MICHEL ACCAD, MD
Frank Knight, risk and uncertainty
In this article, I wish to introduce the reader to the theory of entrepreneurship advanced by Frank Knight (1885-1972), and show that the common, everyday work of the physician could be considered a form of entrepreneurial activity in the Knightian sense.
Knight was an influential American economist. He is best known for his book Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit in which he proposed to distinguish risk and uncertainty as follows:
Risk pertains to situations where outcomes occur with a frequency that is quantifiable according to probability distributions.
Risk may b...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 8, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Simon Nath Tags: THCB MICHEL ACCAD Source Type: blogs
Broken by a thousand, tiny, thoughtless insults
It hit me today while on hold with an insurance company to get a preauthorization. The call took thirty minutes. The medication was denied. And I knew that I was going to get an earful from the patient when I delivered the bad news. As I dialed the phone number, a disturbing, and yet all to familiar, feeling overtook me.
Helplessness, powerlessness, impotence.
I struggle with these feelings daily. In the beginning of my career, they were spurred by the complexity of disease, the willfulness of bad luck. Battling the human condition was a long, difficult slog fraught with trap doors and missteps. Many patients improved, but...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 26, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Jordan Grumet, MD Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
A Government By And For People? Or By And For Cronies?
Occupational licensing is supposed to protect consumers against people who would practice a trade without the proper qualifications. In the first Supreme Court case on the question, Dent v. West Virginia (1883), the Court held that government may require people to be trained and educated before taking up the medical profession, because “such regulations” help “secure” the public “against the consequences of ignorance and incapacity as well as of deception and fraud.” But, the Court warned, if states impose licensing requirements that are not aimed at protecting “the general welfare of [the] people,” those r...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 17, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Timothy Sandefur Source Type: blogs
NCLB Compromise Looking Pretty Bad
Is pre-kindergarten part of elementary and secondary education? By definition, no. But according to preliminary reports about what is in a compromise to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act – really, the latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – a preschool “competitive grant” program will be added to the law. And that’s just one of several troubling items that will reportedly be in the final legislation.
One hallmark of good lawmaking are laws that are easily understood by the people, and larding on lots of items not germane to the topic of a law is one way to move away from tha...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 13, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
Healthcare’s Deadly Data Problem
By LEONARD D’AVOLIO
I have read with interest the ongoing conversation about the ProPublica Surgeon Scorecard in THCB and beyond, not because I believe this latest effort at measuring quality will have a significant effect on patient care, but because behind the latest public metric debate – in fact behind all healthcare metric debates – is a major systemic problem. This problem somehow always seems to remain unseen. We acknowledge that measuring healthcare quality is difficult and that using medical data is challenging, but I’m not convinced that people completely understand why or how measurement and ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 27, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Insults
It hit me today while on hold with an insurance company to get a preauthorization. The call took thirty minutes. The medication was denied. And I knew that I was going to get an earful from the patient when I delivered the bad news. As I dialed the phone number, a disturbing and yet all to familiar feeling overtook me.Helplessness, powerlessness, impotence.I struggle with these feelings daily. In the beginning of my career, they were spurred by the complexity of disease, the willfulness of bad luck. Battling the human condition was a long, difficult slog fraught with trap doors and misst...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - October 6, 2015 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs
TBT: Blind to women’s sexual health
Today’s TBT post ran over two years ago and addressed female dysfunction. Given the FDA’s recent approval of flibanserin, a pill that aims to increase a woman’s desire for sex, we thought it would be helpful to review some of the early conversations on the issue.
A recent article published in partnership with The Investigative Fund and Newsweek questioned the existence of “female dysfunction,” as if to say, who cares about women’s sexual health? If you can’t “see” it, apparently it doesn’t exist. This is one-sided, inaccurate and disparaging of women.
Why is it that when men are impotent it ...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 20, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Aging Choice gender Women's Health Flibanserin Food and Drug Administration Sexual desire Sexual dysfunction Source Type: blogs
Rubio Was Right on Fed Ed Power Grabbing
In last night’s GOP presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in response to a question about the Common Core national curriculum standards that, sooner or later, the Feds would de facto require their use. If you know your federal education – or just Common Core – history, that’s awfully hard to dispute.
Said Rubio: “The Department of Education, like every federal agency, will never be satisfied. They will not stop with it being a suggestion. They will turn it into a mandate. In fact, what they will begin to say to local communities is: ‘You will not get federal money unless you do things the way we wan...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 7, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
He Can No Longer at the Age of 98 [EOL in Art 75]
Beneath Goya's illustration reads the title: “He Can No Longer at the Age of 98.”
An old man stands alone, accompanied only by his shadow. His bent body caves under some unknown force, and the man tries his best to remain upright by relying on two canes, one held in each hand. Facing to the front left of the paper, the old man appears to be on his way to some destination; his feet are not drawn with any suggestion of movement, however, and so it appears that despite his intentions, the old man cannot accomplish the simple goal of walking.
The vagueness of title's meaning allows the viewer to indulge a mul...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - July 25, 2015 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
Maryland’s Maverick Health Care Overhaul: A Physician Perspective
Beginning last year, the state of Maryland embarked on an extraordinary new experiment — one that could be a model for the nation. In partnership with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Governor Martin O’Malley’s statewide hospital commission announced in January 2014 that it would address escalating health care costs by tackling the arms race of medical care. The Commission unveiled the framework for a new plan that will pay hospitals for quality over quantity, enabling them to profit from providing more appropriate—rather than simply more—care.
The proposed change of incentives ha...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 20, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Martin Makary and Seth Goldstein Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Health Professionals Hospitals Organization and Delivery Population Health Public Health Quality AHRQ fee-for-service Martin Makary Martin O'Malley Maryland Patient Safety Prevention RVU targets Source Type: blogs
