Almost one-fourth of all stays in U.S. community hospitals for patients age 18 and older – 7.6 million of nearly 32 million stays – involved depressive, bipolar, schizophrenia and other mental health disorders or substance use related disorders in 2004, according to a new report by HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This study presents the first documentation of the full impact of mental health and substance abuse disorders on U.S. community hospitals. According to the report, about 1.9 million of the 7.6 million stays were for patients who were hospitalized primarily because of a mental health or substance abuse problem. In the other 5.7 million stays, patients were admitted for another condition but they also were diagnosed as having a mental health or substance abuse disorder. Nearly two-thirds of costs were billed to the government: Medicare covered nearly half of the stays, and 18 percent were billed to Medicaid. Roughly 8 percent of the patients were uninsured. Private insurers were billed for the balance. The study also found that one of every three stays of uninsured patients was related to a mental health or substance abuse disorder. ‘Community hospitals play an important role in the […]
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is alarmed that the soaring costs of vaccines combined with lower reimbursements from insurance companies will lead to the under-immunization of the nation’s children and unnecessary outbreaks of preventable diseases. ‘Childhood vaccines are among the greatest medical breakthroughs of the last century and are vital to growing up healthy,’ said AAP President Jay E. Berkelhamer, MD, FAAP. ‘However, the system for delivering vaccines is broken, and we’re going to be in real trouble if it’s not fixed soon.’ Pediatricians spend tens of thousands of dollars and must frequently wait months before payment by payers (including Medicaid and private health plans). Often payments are below the cost of the vaccine. Gardasil, the new cervical cancer vaccine, costs physicians $360 for the recommended series of three doses per person. RotaTeq, the vaccine against diarrhea-causing rotavirus, costs $190 for the recommended three doses. Even the routine measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine costs $86 for the recommended two doses. In addition to the cost of the vaccine, additional costs of ordering, storing, inventory control, insurance and spoilage expenses need to be considered. However, payers are not recognizing these true costs. As a result, some pediatricians […]
Divide and rule. A new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up Baghdad into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq? Published: Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad – despite President George Bush’s ‘surge’ in troops – US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter. The campaign of ‘gated communities’ – whose genesis was in the Vietnam War – will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq. The system has been used – and has spectacularly failed – in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country’s continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to ‘win’ the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of ‘gating’ areas under foreign occupation failed during the […]
DENVER — Since the arrival of the white settlers, the American West has been shaped by the discovery and extraction of natural resources, beginning in the 19th century with silver and gold and then extending to timber, copper, uranium and fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. For decades, the industries that grew around these resources mined state capitals as thoroughly as they did the riches beneath the earth. As recently as three decades ago, the Mountain West states erupted in what was known as the ‘sagebrush rebellion’ – a loud and sustained clamor from the extraction industries and their political allies for the federal government to open millions of acres of public land for resource exploration and development. But that has changed. In less than a generation, the sagebrush rebellion has given way across the West to a renewable revolution. Today, from the Rockies to the Pacific, a new political axis is emerging that could transform the national debate over energy, the environment and global warming. ‘It’s a massive shift in not just policy but ¦ voter attitudes,’ said Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and presidential candidate. Across the West, […]
David R. Hodge, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services at Arizona State University’s West campus, has conducted an exhaustive meta-analysis on the effects of intercessory prayer among people with psychological or medical problems. In other words, does God – or some other type of transcendent entity – answer prayer for healing? According to Hodge’s study, ‘A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer,’ the answer is ‘Yes.’ ‘There have been a number of studies on intercessory prayer, or prayer offered for the benefit of another person,’ said Hodge, a leading expert on spirituality and religion. ‘Some have found positive results for prayer. Others have found no effect. Conducting a meta-analysis takes into account the entire body of empirical research on intercessory prayer. Using this procedure, we find that prayer offered on behalf of another yields positive results.’ Hodge’s work will be featured in the March, 2007, issue of Research on Social Work Practice, a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research on practice outcomes. It is widely recognized as one of the most prestigious journals in the field of social work. Hodge noted that his […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
