Healthcare-NOW!s on Saturday, January 28th and Sunday, January 29th in Houston, TX is fast approaching. This is our opportunity for people across the nation to come together to share experiences and ideas, and develop a concrete plan to organize for single-payer improved Medicare-for-all in the year ahead.
We will discuss how to push the single-payer agenda forward in an election year, as well as at a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are on the chopping block.
With the Super Committees refusal to protect Medicare, now is the time to strategize and organize. Please join us in Houston on January 28th and 29th and share your ideas and insights.
If you are unable to attend, to our scholarship fund to help another activist attend. Read more…
Hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) produced marked dose-related increases in airflow in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients without arousing them from sleep, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center. The study suggests the potential therapeutic efficacy of HGNS across a broad range of sleep apnea severity and offers an alternative to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), the current mainstay of treatment for moderate to severe OSA. The effectiveness of CPAP is often limited by poor patient adherence.
“With HGNS, airflow increased in all of our patients, and increased progressively with stimulus amplitude,” according to Alan R. Schwartz, MD, medical director of the Sleep Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
Read more…
How The Ab Stand Compares with Leading Weight-Loss Products
The Ab Stand is one of the various pieces of at home exercise equipment advertised on the Internet and the TV. With so many of these products out there on the market today, it can be hard to decide which one you want to use, or if any of them really the quality or as effective as they claim to be. Read this review to learn more about what the Ab Stand is and how it works.
Not applicable.
The Ab Stand makes it claims to fame by saying you will not have to get on the floor and risk harming your back and neck to do your sit ups or crunches which would potentially cause damage.
Read more…
This post in the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog examines areport (.pdf) by the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) that offers six recommended treatment and prevention research priorities to U.S. Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby and the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) to guide future PEPFAR programs. According to the blog, the recommendations grew out of a SAB meeting in September “to discuss the results of the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 052 trial, which found that individuals with HIV infection who were given immediate antiretroviral therapy (ART) were 96 percent less likely to transmit the virus to their uninfected sexual partners than those whose treatment was delayed” (Mazzotta, 11/17).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J.
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ATLANTA, Nov. 18 (UPI) The percentage of adults with diabetes who reported visual impairment dropped from 26 percent to 19 percent between 1997 and 2010, U.S. officials say.
A report, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said diabetes can lead to visual impairment and blindness, but early detection and treatment of many common eye diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, can reduce the risk.
However, the age-adjusted percentage of adults with diagnosed diabetes and self-reported visual impairment who reported having consulted an eye-care provider in the past year remained constant at about 63 percent, the report said.
Read more…
Women going through the pregnancy phase should not be burdened with the health care costs incurred during this joyful moment of their lives. It is already difficult encountering the various uncertainties of motherhood at this point, hence it is wise to at least purchase a maternal insurance to protect both infant and mother.
Maternal insurance policy includes an additional coverage for labor in addition to conventional health insurance coverage. Usually, a standard health insurance plan contains maternity coverage but sometimes a person needs to acknowledge a form stating they require protection at the moment pregnancy commences, with additional payment associated with this feature. Read more…
As carers we are the ones who best know the person/people we care for. We might share experiences to help each other, we might pass on information that we have found useful, what we do NOT do is think that our experiences qualify us to assess and judge other people with disabilities /illnesses and their carers/families.
So why does a doctors receptionist who had a disabled sister think she is entitled to do so? Why does having a disabled sister qualify a doctors receptionist to pass judgement on the ability and intellgence of a physically disabled person?
It doesnt!
But the receptionist we encountered today thought that she was entitled to discriminate against my daughter by, quite nastily, assuming that her physical disability means that she has no mind of her own. She insulted my daughter by implying that she could not communicate her wishes and she insulted me by accusing me of answering for her when I had no such thing and never do. Apparently having had a disabled sister means that she knows how it works – in truth she clearly knows nothing!
No two disabled people will be the same even when their diagnosis is the same. Individuals will be individuals and my intelligent daughter is extremely offended by the attitude of this woman.
We were neither of us impressed with the other receptionist either – she held the office door at the back of reception open so that the whole waiting room could hear her shouting at me down the corridor – a deliberate act that was intended to demonstrate her power and authority to everyone in the waiting room.
These two would be better employed at the end of the dole queue!