Category: Interesting Links

Lack of Sleep Affects Genes, and Other Links

Lack of sleep mars genes.

Hiring only healthy employees beats managed care every day of the week.

Does the F.D.A. have the authority to make smoking nonaddictive?

Most people like the idea of virtual medicine.

Mar 13, 2013 | 10 comments | by John Goodman

Insurer Denies Coverage to Disabled Patient, and Other Links

Equine therapy: A lot of health insurers won’t cover it.

Is saturated fat, the type found in meat and butter, really bad for you?

Can advertising make you fat?

Imagine chickens that are resistant to bird flu, pigs that excrete less pollution. The problem: government.

Mar 13, 2013 | 13 comments | by John Goodman

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Thousands of patients a year leave the nation’s operating rooms with surgical items in their bodies.

There are 27 million slaves worldwide, more than in 1860.

Unintended consequences: laws prohibiting physicians from prescribing drugs without a prior physical examination are killing people.

Mar 12, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman

Rising Cost of Diabetes, and Other Links

Diabetes costs the nation almost $2,500 per household.

IBM is working to program Watson so that it can pass the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination.

Yes, ObamaCare has $1 trillion in new taxes over the next ten years; but about one-third of them are targeted at the “rich.”

Mar 12, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Study: CT scans probably cause 2% of cancer cases in the U.S.

Most women with ovarian cancer miss out on treatments that could add a year or more to their lives.

Bad news for Medicare Advantage plans: national enrollment drop of 11 percent, and an average benefit loss of $2,235 per beneficiary.

Nurse refused to perform CPR to avoid liability.

Mar 12, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman

Heart Disease Common in Historic Times, and Other Links

137 mummies from four cultures spanning 4,000 years challenge the widely held assumption that cardiovascular disease is largely a malady of current times.

Internet better than FDA for alerts to drug side effects.

Do animals get all the same diseases as humans?

Mar 11, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman

The Cost of Eating Unhealthy Meals, and Other Links

No more excuses: David Friedman shows that a healthy meal (homemade bread and lentils) is less expensive than eating at McDonald’s.

White House finally yields: we will not use a drone to kill a noncombatant American on U.S. soil.

Inequality update: Even socialistic Sweden has more billionaires per capita than we do.

Mar 08, 2013 | 15 comments | by John Goodman

Good Ratings for Online Physicians, and Other Links

Surprise: most people like their doctors.

Nine in ten Americans say they are in good health. The busy body “experts” are sure they are wrong.

What your ancestors looked like.

The janitors in the Capitol aren’t getting a pay cut after all!

Mar 07, 2013 | 13 comments | by John Goodman

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised.

AMA: taxpayers have no right to know how much the government pays doctors.

Medicare Trustee: the federal government is unlikely to keep its Medicaid promises.

Caesarian births range for 7 percent at one hospital to 70 percent at another.

Nearly one-third of doctors using the EHR system reported having missed or failed to follow up on key electronic alerts about patient test results.

Mar 07, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman

Decreased Democratic Support for ACA, and Other Links

Only 57% of Democrats favor ObamaCare.

Economists: the effects of global warming on the economy will either be positive or tiny.

The U.S. has as many as 1,000 privately owned tanks. It also has about 250,000 privately owned machine guns, but don’t tell Diane Feinstein about any of this.

David Henderson: Getting government out of the business of regulating the skies has led to a remarkable collapse in airline prices.

Mar 06, 2013 | 9 comments | by John Goodman