Patricia Pittman, PhD, and Candice Chen, MD, MPH , Director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity, George Washington University | Member of the Mullan Institute, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University - MedPage Today
Stephan:
The American illness profit system, as this report describes, is a disaster particularly for poor people. As one example: In 2019, 44% of U.S. counties had no Medicaid ob/gyns at all. So if you are a pregnant poor woman I’m not sure what you do. This is the state of healthcare in the richest nation in the world and, I think, this should be seen as a national shame.
Credit: MedPage Today
Patients are increasingly alarmed by the health workforce shortages delaying care, reducing access, and in some cases harming patient safety and quality of care.
Policymakers usually rely on provider counts to estimate and address shortage areas. However, we know that not all providers accept all types of insurance.
We know that simply having health insurance is not enough; we also need more healthcare providers willing to see Medicaid patients.
Newly available Medicaid claims data (T-MSIS) now allow us to systematically track providers that serve Medicaid patients, as well as those that don’t. The data on primary care providers is displayed […]
Patrick Rucker, Maya Miller and David Armstrong, - ProPublica
Stephan:
Yet another story about how awful America’s illness profit system is. It has nothing to do with fostering wellbeing, it is all about greed and profit. The only thing that is going to change this is millions of people in the streets and a government controlled by Democrats. If you vote Republican you are condemning millions of your fellow Americans to the horrors of this system.
Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica
Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said.
When a stubborn pain in Nick van Terheyden’s bones would not subside, his doctor had a hunch what was wrong.https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed/?pub=propublica&articleID=cigna-saves-millions-claims
Without enough vitamin D in the blood, the body will pull calcium from the bones. Left untreated, a vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis.
A blood test in the fall of 2021 confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis, and van Terheyden expected his company’s insurance plan, managed by Cigna, to cover the cost of the bloodwork. Instead, Cigna sent van Terheyden a letter explaining that it would not pay for the $350 test because it was not “medically necessary.”
The letter was signed by one of Cigna’s medical directors, a doctor employed by the company to review insurance claims.
Something about the denial letter did not sit well with van Terheyden, a 58-year-old Maryland resident. “This was a clinical decision being second-guessed by someone with no knowledge of me,” said van […]
Charlotte Alter, Senior Correspondent - Time Magazine
Stephan:
Here is another Red state horror story about a 13-year-old girl who was raped, became pregnant, and had to carry her pregnancy to term because she could not have the pregnancy terminated. These stories should shame us as a nation, and we should recognize that all of these stories are directly the result of Republican governance. But we don’t seem to care about these children who have been forced to become mothers before they are even out of elementary school.
Dr. Balthrop performs an ultrasound on a patient who is 14 weeks pregnant. Credit: Lucy Garrett / TIME
Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. It’s August and pushing 90 degrees, which means the brown patterned curtains are drawn, the air conditioner is on high, and the room feels like a hiding place. Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant. […]
Leo Dominguez, Matt McCann and Nadja Popovich, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan:
Here is some very important good news. We are leaving the carbon energy era faster than you may have realized. We are not doing as well as China, but we are doing much better under President Biden than we were doing under criminal Trump. This is going to make a huge difference to America’s future.
Delivery vans in Pittsburgh. Buses in Milwaukee. Cranes loading freight at the Port of Los Angeles. Every municipal building in Houston. All are powered by electricity derived from the sun, wind or other sources of clean energy.
Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.
A similar energy transition is already well underway in Europe and elsewhere. But the United States is catching up, and globally, change is happening at a pace that is surprising even the experts who track it closely.
Wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world’s largest source of electricity. Automakers have made electric vehicles central to their business strategies and are openly talking about an expiration date on the internal combustion engine. Heating, cooling, cooking and some manufacturing are […]
Here is some very good news that I hope is the beginning of a positive trend. We should be building much more useful mass transport systems, and the vehicles should be electronic. Montgomery County, Maryland is being very smart about preparing for the future.
Montgomery County, Maryland solar bus. Credit: Ben Schumin / CC BY-SA 2.0
At the Brookville bus depot in Montgomery County, Maryland, buses park under a large solar canopy. The solar is part of a microgrid that’s charging electric buses.
“The depot serves about a third of our transit operation,” says Chris Conklin, director of the county’s department of transportation. “It hosts about 150 buses that provide service in the more densely settled portion of the county.”
Only 14 of those buses are now electric, but the county has ordered 100 more and plans to transition the rest of the fleet served by the Brookville depot within a few years.
That will help reduce carbon pollution. And it benefits the neighborhoods near the depot, too.
“The neighborhoods in which these are operating, they like the quietness of the vehicle, without the engine noise, without the exhaust,” Conklin says.
The solar canopy also helps minimize light pollution from the depot. And it shields drivers and mechanics from rain and snow.
Conklin says riders have embraced the new buses, too.
“They do like the vehicles. They’re sleeker-looking, […]
