"With the holidays and being taken hostage, they are likely off the stress chart." — Rochester psychologist Anita Remig, reflecting on the likely current psychological state of the six Clinton campaign workers taken hostage last Friday in New Hampshire by 48-year old Leeland Eisenberg.
The Pipeline: Vaccines v.s. Antibiotics by Dov Michaeli
In 1796 Dr. Edward Jenner performed an experiment that today would have
got him expelled from his Medical Society, and maybe even landed them
in jail. He vaccinated a boy against smallpox by pricking his arms with
pus taken from the sores of a milkmaid with cowpox, a closely related
but milder disease. He based this audacious experiment on his astute
observation that milkmaids, who had been exposed to cowpox, never
contracted smallpox. Let’s not forget what smallpox meant in those
days—it meant an almost 100% chance of death. Could anybody have
guessed that this observation would become the first harbinger of the
field of Immunology?
It took over 200 years before another vaccine was created; in 1914 a
vaccine against whooping cough was introduced. But then, the pace
picked up: in 1928 a vaccine against diphtheria, in 1933 against
tetanus, and so on. Five years ago a vaccine against varicella, causing
chickenpox and shingles was approved. Last year a vaccine against human
papilloma virus (HPV) was introduced. This virus causes endometrial
(lining of the uterus) cancer, and immunization of prepubertal girls
should protect them for life. This is the first successful vaccine
against cancer.
POLITICS: Jonathan Cohn confesses on the Obama 15 million problem
Apparently the 15m uninsured in Obama’s plan are all Jonathan Cohn’s fault. At least the picking up on that number by Hillary and Edwards in the debates, that is.
I’m still struggling with how Obama is correctly to the left of those guys on the only foreign policy that really matters but in a foolish place on health care. Anyone relying on David Cutler for advice on health care must be seriously internally conflicted over what the aim is! After all Cutler seems to be too.
More on that to come later this week; but my explanation is that Obama shares my belief that health reform is impossible in 2009—so why bother?
POLICY: The Proper ASD Policy Begins with Listening to Parents, By John Whitmer
On November 24, 2007 Senator Clinton announced her "Plan to Help Children and Families Affected by
Autism." While the Senator should be commended for finally paying attention to the
issue in her presidential campaign and while other candidates should take note, her plan isn’t really a plan at all.
The "plan" calls for spending 700 million dollars to primarily fund research "to identify
causes of autism and monitoring its impact across the country. The Combating Autism Act of 2006, which Clinton co-sponsored, appropriates 500 of that 700 million. Therefore, the plan really only calls for an additional 200 million. Meanwhile, not one penny of that original 500 million has been spent. Perhaps the Senator needs
to look first into seeing that her original policy gets implemented.
In fact, Senator Clinton should lead the charge in Congress to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act(IDEA); this would go a long way in solving the issue of "encroachment" that
school districts across the nation are facing.
POLICY: What next in the fight against AIDS?
Susan Blumenthal updates us on World Aids Day which was last Saturday.
HEALTH 2.0 UPDATE Dyson, Kibbe join advisory board
We’re pleased to announce that Esther Dyson of
EDventure Holdings has agreed to serve on the Health 2.0 advisory board. Esther’s tech background is well known and second to none. Esther has been watching, leading and guiding innovation in the technology industry for more than two decades. In 1983, she purchased a small and relatively obscure industry newsletter called the Rosen Electronics Letter, renamed it Release 1.0 and made history with a series of bold forecasts on the impact of the pc and computer networks. Her predications included some of the first warnings that American dominance in R&D might be on the decline and that the American universities might fail to produce adequate numbers of students trained in the sciences. From 1998 to 2000 Esther served as the chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In 2003, in response to public criticism of ICANN, she played a key role in driving reforms at the organization. Companies where she has served on the board or as an early stage investor include include Flickr, Del.icio.us, Orbitz, Medscape and Medstory, as well as many, many others. We are delighted to welcome Esther and look forward to her contributions.
We also welcome David Kibbe MD MBA. A highly regarded figure in Washington and in healthcare information technology circles, Dr. Kibbe has served as director of the American Academy of Family Physicians’Center for Health Information Technology of the and played a leadership role at a number of companies. David is perhaps best known for his work in the fight to encourage physicians to adopt electronic medical records. He is currently involved with the ASTM CCR standard for health data and information exchange. When not busy with his other projects, David writes for the Health 2.0 Blog, where he has recently contributed posts on Health 2.0 and identity and Computable Data Exchange and Sparse Information Model.
INTL: Market invisible hand forces Canadian death rate numbers public!
In a valiant effort to stop Canadians storming the borders and leaving their home health care system bereft of their health care dollars, the Canadian government has yielded. It’s made death rate numbers at Canadian hospitals public. The probably futile hope is that Canadian citizens will believe that the competition of transparency will lead to improvements in the current situation in some Canadian hospitals, such as the Scarborough Hospital mentioned in the article, which kills 124 out of every 100 patients admitted.
Now that the Canadian dollar is so strong, buying some 45,000 American Lire to the northern Peso, it’s cheaper for a Canadian to sneak across the border and pay cash for open heart surgery than it is to pay the tax on the Canadian cigarettes that caused the heart disease in the first place.
The combination of renowned treatment from private American hospitals that kill far fewer than 1 in every 1 patient (and sometimes less than that), and the strength of the Northern Peso have now resulted in the desperate situation of empty waiting rooms, and no queues for surgery in America’s northern neighbor.
The collectivist Marxists who run things in Canadian health care from their command center in the bunker of the UBC health care economics department have been horrified at this development. A spokesman who sounded a lot like Morris Barer was (or maybe wasn’t) overheard saying, “it’s our right as Canadian elitists to make the rest of our citizens wait forever for hospital care that will probably kill them if they don’t die waiting in line first. The overwhelming transparency and easily demonstrated quality of the now dirt cheap American health care system is not fair.”
Reports that the WTO was investigating were unconfirmed at time of writing.
Unrepentant free-marketeer Canadian exile David Gratzer was reportedly seen crowing, “See how Adam Smith has kicked those loonies in the ass! The market triumphs again!”
Now can I get a job in the Giuliani administration?
If Grady Fails By Brian Klepper
In an extraordinary move earlier this week, the politically-appointed Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority, the governing body over Atlanta’s Grady Health System, unanimously and voluntary stepped aside, to be replaced by a new non-profit corporation. Projecting a $55 million deficit this year, the hospital had just three weeks of cash on hand. It needs $300 million immediately for sorely needed renovations, and must deal with $63 million in accumulated debt to its biggest creditors, Emory University Medical School and Morehouse School of Medicine. New oversight was the predicate for a hoped-for financial bailout from business, philanthropies and financial institutions.
Other Atlanta hospitals are undoubtedly concerned that Grady will fail, and will probably do everything possible to support a bailout. The last thing they want is for Grady’s patients to come to their facilities. Now would be a good time to rally business leaders and legislators, who nearly always go to fancier hospitals, which of course has been a big part of the problem.
Grady’s turmoil should be recognized as the first small shock of much larger seismic event, long in the making, a concrete sign of America’s relentlessly intensifying health care crisis. The wrath falls on our most vulnerable – those with health problems or with few financial resources – as well as on the institutions and professionals that care for them.
HEALTH PLANS: Tracing this all back to the vine….
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, has an op-ed in the NY Times about how Burger King has basically singlehandedly scuppered a meager pay rise for some of the poorest immigrant workers in America. It’s searing stuff and he relates it all back to the owners. Who are they?
Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its Burger King investment within three years.Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.
Why is this appearing in a blog about health care? Because the same kind of corporate bad behavior happens here too, and the same type of private equity groups are behind it.
Who’s the worst behaved actor in the list of not exactly angelic characters in American health insurance? THCB regulars know that I’m talking about: Mega Life & Health.
Who owns HealthMarkets, Mega’s parent company? Yup, the biggest and richest private equity group, Blackstone, and Lloyd Blankfein and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs.
I’m delighted that they’re being called out personally in the NY Times, and somewhat frustrated that neither Paul Krugman nor Bob Herbert has taken up a similar cause on the health care side. (Incidentally Mitt Romney owes his huge fortune to Burger King’s owner Bain Capital, but that’s another story).
But it’s time to make these connections and to call out some of the richest people in America on what they’re decisions and the behavior of companies they own is doing to some of those significantly less fortunate than themselves.
Genomics vs. Proteonomics: Accessorizing Your Genes By Scott Shreeve
I had the occasion this past weekend to be out with my wife doing
some shopping. Apparently, I have
been too busy of late to notice that
my wardrobe had been in some decline. My wife therefore drug me out on
grey Saturday (which follows Black Friday) to hit the local Nordstrom Rack. I was shamed into trying on jeans formerly priced at over $200 (who pay sthis kind of money for a pair of jeans?), gigolo bling-bling shoes (are pointy toes really appropriate for male shoes?) , and a variety of belts and watches (how does wearing a watch “change” my outfit) required to properly “accessorize” my look. We ultimately settled out on some funky 7 Diamonds and Roar surfer shirts to match the now half priced jeans. More on the shoes later.
The experience of “accessorizing” reminded me of a recent post by Matthew Holt regarding Personal Genome Management. Matthew reviews some of the recent buzz surrounding 23andMe, highlights longtime player DNA Direct, and then puts out some thoughts as to where the market is and can go over the next several years (there is some interesting banter within the comments section as well). He concludes with this consideration:
“The genetic test market is very small, and the
management services that these companies offer around it are going to
only be a share of the testing market itself. So the fact that Navigenics
has already raised money at a substantial valuation means that some
very astute people are thinking that genetic testing will turn from an occasional activity for a small minority of patients (usually those going into pregnancy with some type of risk factor) into
a consumer norm that most patients will have as part of the standard
testing they get done and that management of that genetic information
will be part of the new flow of consumer and clinician activity.”
Matthew hints at something that I believe most people have failed to
grasp when considering the genetic market. I actually see three
distinct limitations:> Continue this post over at the Health 2.0 Blog ….
