A laptop and a cardboard box. These two items could be major tools in improving regular folks’ health throughout this year — and beyond — if they get launched on important tasks, pronto. What needs to happen is for patients to be hyperconscious, persistent, and skeptical enough to start gathering vital records about themselves and their medical care. The documents they should have handy include all their medical records, as well as a file of any bills, insurance statements, and correspondence with providers about their treatment. It might seem like a lot of bumpf. But consider, with patience ..read more

Editor’s note: The blog will shift in ’23 to more episodic publication. Just a reminder: 2023 will begin what could be consequential changes in aspects of older Americans, notably those age 65-plus and covered by Medicare. As part of law of the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in the Congress and pushed by the Biden Administration, diabetics on original Medicare will see their cost for lifesaving insulin capped at $35-a-month under Part-D prescription drug plans. As the official Medicare site reports ..read more

Editor’s note: The blog will shift in the days ahead to more episodic publishing. Members of Congress raced at the year’s end to avoid the consequences of a brutal snowstorm battering huge swaths of the country. Before hitting the holiday exits, lawmakers approved a whopping $1.7 trillion bill to fund the federal government through the fiscal year and until next fall, spending giants sums on guns over butter. Those who drill down on military budgets will be better positioned to determine the wisdom of the $858 billion appropriation by Congress for the Pentagon. The 4,000-plus pages that detail ..read more

As federal, state, and local officials seek to slash the nation’s spiking road toll of injury and death, law enforcement authorities need to crack down on the scary prevalence of motorists who get behind the wheel while intoxicated by marijuana or alcohol. Indeed, as NPR reported: “A large study by U.S. highway safety regulators found that more than half the people injured or killed in traffic crashes had one or more drugs, or alcohol, in their bloodstreams. Also, just over 54% of injured drivers had drugs or alcohol in their systems, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), an active ingredient in m ..read more

Californians have accomplished something that federal regulators have failed to — despite long, difficult campaigning. Voters in the biggest state in the nation not only have banned Big Tobacco from peddling its flavored products that target and exploit communities of color and the young. They also have defeated the industry in its legal challenges. Big Tobacco had launched urgent appeals of the November ballot initiative banning flavored tobacco products only to see the U.S. Supreme Court decline to consider its case, the New York Times reported: “As is the [high] court’s practice when it ru ..read more

Big hospitals and hospital chains have wailed, with considerable justification, since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic about financial damages they have suffered due to costly shortages of desperately needed health staff. But the institutions fostered this staffing crisis, with profit-ravenous suits in executive suites boosting hospital bottom lines in flusher times by slashing one of the biggest expenses in the business — frontline health care workers. To see this up close, let’s zoom in on the experiences of Ascension, one of the nation’s largest chains, to see how hospitals plunged ..read more

Cardiologists and other doctors have words to the wise for the aging, party-hearty-for-the-holidays crowd: Excessive boozing, as part of their seasonal merry making, puts those who partake of too much liquid cheer at heightened risk of heart problems. The last thing, too, that public safety advocates would want to see in times when the nation is battling a rising road toll is any more intoxicated motorists. Experts have become sufficiently savvy about the health damage caused heavy seasonal drinking that they developed a name for the harmful condition: holiday heart syndrome, the New York Time ..read more

In regular places, when alarms blare and it becomes clear that a big, important something is broken and threatens folks’ well-being, those with common sense race to make needed fixes. Washington, D.C., is different. And members of Congress, the White House, and top federal bureaucrats already may be dodging a desperately needed reckoning for the Food and Drug Administration. This  health watchdog is taking body blows about two of its biggest responsibilities — ensuring the safety, effectiveness, and affordability of prescription drugs, and its oversight of these same qualities with the na ..read more

While regular folks will count their pennies and fret about affording gifts for loved ones during an inflation-plagued holiday season, plutocrats have given the hoi polloi a rare glimpse of the major loot they see in the business of peddling health-wrecking e-cigarettes and vaping. The concerning disclosures are emerging as part of the financial struggles for the industry pioneer Juul to stave off fierce federal regulation, angry customers, and plummeting business to survive. In its latest step, Juul — the high-tech company that helped to create the e-cigarette and vaping fad and then saw its ..read more

Seniors and their loved ones should take note of new and increasing data that researchers are developing about the risks undertaken by elderly patients who choose to undergo significant surgeries — procedures that make up a little less than half of costly operations performed in this country. The numbers about invasive medical work can be mind-changing, especially for those with age-associated conditions, the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service reported. As KHN’s “navigating aging” columnist Judith Graham wrote: “Nearly 1 in 7 older adults die within a year of undergoing major ..read more