Tag: "heart disease"

Nanny City is Back

[New York City’s] Health Department is going on a diet. No deep-fried foods served at agency lunches. No cookies and cakes at the same time. And no beverages over 25 calories per ounce:

The brochure requires that tap water be on the menu when food or drinks are served and suggests bagels or muffins be cut into halves or quarters to reduce the number of calories employees intake, reports the Daily News. Also, thinly sliced, whole-grain bread is a suggested offering at work events.

Aside from the dietary rules, employees are required to adopt good personal and office hygiene habits, namely by avoiding wearing smelly products, eavesdropping and putting up signs co-workers may deem offensive, according to the new set of guidelines for “Life in the Cubicle Village” obtained by the News.

Full article on New York’s Health Department health-kick.

Apr 07, 2011 | 9 comments | by

Arizona Proposes $50 Obesity Fee

Arizona’s governor on Thursday proposed levying a $50 fee on some enrollees in the state’s cash-starved Medicaid program, including obese people who don’t follow a doctor-supervised slimming regimen and smokers … “If you want to smoke, go for it,” said Monica Coury, spokeswoman for Arizona’s Medicaid program. “But understand you’re going to have to contribute something for the cost of the care of your smoking.”

 

Apr 05, 2011 | 6 comments | by

Diagnosis of Chronic Disease Depends on Where You Live

Researchers analyzed records on nearly 5.2 million Americans aged 65 and up [and] examined data on diagnoses of nine serious chronic conditions: cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral artery disease, severe liver disease, diabetes with end-organ disease, chronic renal failure and dementia.

The mean number of chronic health conditions diagnosed was 8.7 for every 10 people…. On the low end, patients in the Grand Junction, Colo., and Idaho Falls, Idaho, were diagnosed with 5.8 chronic illnesses for every 10 people, compared to more than 12 illnesses for every 10 people in Miami and McAllen, Texas.

Full article on chronic diseases and where you live.

Mar 21, 2011 | 5 comments | by

Britain’s NHS Makes Controversial Proposal

A few years ago, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) considered refusing to treat obese people for lifestyle-related illnesses.  In the same vein, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the NHS’s guidance body, produced advice that raised the prospect of heavy smokers and obese people being refused healthcare.  An NHS health trust in Northern England now proposes to stop sending obese people and smokers for certain operations because their unhealthy lifestyles allegedly lower the chance of an operation’s success.

Full article on the NHS.

Mar 15, 2011 | 6 comments | by

Five Myths About Longevity

Myth 1: Thinking happy thoughts reduces stress and leads to a longer life.

Myth 2: Gardening and walking aren’t enough to keep you healthy.

Myth 3: Lighten up; being serious is bad for you.

Myth 4: Take it easy and don’t work so hard. You’ll live longer.

Myth 5: Get married and you will live longer.

Full article, based on a 90-year study, on the 5 myths of living longer.

Mar 08, 2011 | 8 comments | by

How Much Does Health Care Matter?

A new study in the influential policy journal Health Affairs gives added credence to the idea that much of what drives health falls outside of the realm of medical care. In fact, this must-read study points out what so many of us know: that simply providing someone a health insurance card is not enough to make them healthy.

What better place to test this theory than in Canada – our northern neighbor with a publicly financed universal health care system. Researchers looked at nearly 15,000 Canadians in the nation’s health system who were free of heart disease and tracked them for at least a decade.  Not surprisingly, people disadvantaged by little education and low income, used the health care system more than those with higher incomes. But more importantly, this increased use of services had no discernable effect on improving their health or cutting their death rates — the ultimate bottom line — when compared with others with higher education, higher income and LESS usage of health care

This is from Jim Marks, writing at The Health Care Blog. See our previous post here.

Mar 02, 2011 | 9 comments | by

Do We Have It All Wrong About Obesity?

Do obese people generate costs for other people? Mainly not, according to a review of the literature:

In employer-provided health insurance pools, being obese causes limited externality harm because obese individuals likely pay the costs of their body weight through reduced wages. In public health insurance, there is an implicit transfer from thin people to obese people, but this transfer is progressive and seems unlikely to induce substantial social loss.

[One] way in which the obese “subsidize” the thin is, presumably, by dying earlier and not claiming as much in Social Security benefits…for 50-year olds, obesity reduces life expectancy by 1.65 years…for 65 year-olds, obesity reduces life expectancy by 1.05 years.

See Robin Hanson as well.

Mar 01, 2011 | 14 comments | by

Is More Health Insurance the Answer?

The Rand Corporation created a very interesting pie chart, quantifying the influences of factors responsible for premature death in the US.

A mere 10% of all premature deaths in the US can be attributed to being unable to access medical care. The other 90% is split nearly evenly between behavioral, social-environmental and genetic factors, of which 60%, the non-genetic drivers, can be modified. Yet instead of investing the bulk of our resources in this big bucket of behavioral-environmental-social modification, we put 97% of all healthcare dollars towards medical interventions. This investment can at best produce marginal improvements in premature deaths, since the biggest causes of the effect in question are being all but ignored.

This is taken from two posts (here and here) by Marya Zilberberg.

Feb 25, 2011 | 4 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

CIA Retiree Arrested, Dragged  Off Violently, Brutalized, Handcuffed, and Jailed After Standing And Turning his Back During Hillary Speech (HT to David Henderson, who has since backtracked here.)

Fake Doctors’ Notes Being Handed Out at Wisconsin Gov. Union Rally

Woman Falls Ill In Philly Airport Terminal, Dies After Waiting 40 Minutes For Help…

Heart Disease is the Number One Killer of Male Gorillas in North American Zoos. They were fed vitamin-rich, high-sugar and high-starch foods for decades.

CDC:  Prescription painkiller overdose deaths exceed cocaine and heroin deaths combined.

Feb 22, 2011 | 5 comments | by

Robin Hanson on the Down Side of Medicine

Most people are quite skeptical when I tell them the standard estimate is near zero for the marginal effect of medicine on health… In at least 0.4% of hospital stays, a medical mistake “caused or contributed to a patient’s death.” (more)

CT scans of the heart cause one cancer for every 270 [=0.37%] 40-year-old women who undergo the test, researchers estimate. Yet in a study of CT scans investigating abdominal, hip or pelvic pain, only 9 percent of emergency-room doctors knew that the scans increased cancer risk. (more) [But reasonable doubts have been raised about both figures.]

29,000 future cancers could be related to CT scans received in 2007, with the greatest number of cancers projected in the abdomen and pelvis. The cancer risk was greatest for young patients. (more)

More at Hanson’s blog, OvercomingBias.

Feb 15, 2011 | 5 comments | by
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