Consumer Reports rated hospital safety for the first time, scoring hospitals on infections, communication, readmissions, imaging, complications and death rates, with some famous names faring poorly. Medical harm contributes to 180,000 Medicare patient deaths a year.
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Healthcare
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Healthcare
New York Times and Wall Street Journal Warn that Hospitals are Killing Us
Dr. Mercola relays surgeon Marty Makary's Wall Street Journal estimate that medical errors would rank as the sixth leading cause of death in America, and a 2011 Health Grades study putting harmful or lethal errors above 40,000 a day. Much of the harm is preventable.
Healthcare
Medicare’s Open Enrollment period is October 15 - December 7
CMS says Medicare beneficiaries can change or update their health plan and prescription drug coverage for 2013 between October 15 and December 7. Those satisfied with their current plan need do nothing. Plan details are at medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE.
Healthcare
How a Root Canal Can Affect Your Health
Dentist Hal A. Huggins argues root canals harbor disease-producing bacteria, citing Weston Price's early-1900s work implanting root canal fragments in rabbits, which Huggins says transferred human diseases, and contends liability has kept dentistry quiet about it.
Healthcare
Healthcare News headlines for Monday Sept 17, 2012
A roundup of Kaiser Health News items for September 17, 2012: Colorado's broad consensus on its essential health benefits benchmark, research tying recession-hit older workers to worse long-term health, and an analysis finding Medicare readmission rates falling more than reported.
Healthcare
Medical News Today on Healthcare
A roundup of morning health policy coverage: Kaiser Health News on Medicare's patchy shingles vaccine coverage, the Romney and Ryan camps clarifying their positions on the health law, and slowing growth in diagnostic imaging use and spending.
Healthcare
90% of Dentists Don't Understand This (That's Why I Suffered Kidney Damage)
Mercola says about half of US dentists work mercury-free but only an estimated 10 percent of those grasp the risks of removing amalgam fillings, which are half mercury. He describes kidney damage he attributes to an improper removal, and interviews dentist Bill Glaros.
Healthcare
Bill Gates Leveraged Philanthropy: Corporate Profit versus Humanity
Mercola summarizes an Education Week commentary on the Gates Foundation's leveraged philanthropy, using modest grants, advocacy and tax-free lobbying to steer government policy toward corporate investors. He argues its Monsanto partnership and backing of engineered crops clash with its stated goals.
Healthcare
The Myth of a Safer Hospital Birth for Low-Risk Pregnancies
Mercola summarizes midwife Judy Cohain's review of 17 studies over 15 years, which reported that planned attended home birth for low-risk women carried perinatal mortality equal to or lower than hospital birth and significantly lower maternal morbidity.
Healthcare
State medicaid abortion coverage policies make it hard to have free abortion
Researchers analyzed 70 abortion-providing facilities in 15 states from 2007 to 2010 and found two states reimbursed 97% of qualifying Medicaid claims while the other 13 paid only 36%, with providers citing unclear rejections, complex billing and slow rates.
Healthcare
How the Gates Foundation's Unholy Alliances Affect You and Your Health
Mercola criticizes the Gates Foundation's leveraged philanthropy model, arguing that partnerships such as the one with Monsanto, and the foundation's own investments in projects it funds, can put corporate profit ahead of public good.
Healthcare
10 Shocking Medical Mistakes
Mercola relays CNN's list of the ten most common hospital mistakes, beginning with treating the wrong patient and with surgical tools left inside people, which one New England Journal of Medicine study put at about 1,500 Americans a year.
Healthcare
Eating This Feeds Bacteria That Can Poke Holes Through Your Gut
Dr. Mercola cites research finding azithromycin raised the chance of dying from a cardiovascular event by 250 percent in the first five days compared with amoxicillin. He argues the larger antibiotic exposure comes from food, with livestock accounting for an estimated 70 percent of US use.
Healthcare
Beware: These Best-Selling Products Can Make You Sick
Mercola catalogs industry misconduct: a flame retardant witness who fabricated cases of infants burned to death for California legislators, 19 drug companies on a 1990s corporate crime list, and 197 people charged in a $452 million Medicare fraud.
Healthcare
Almost Everyone Does This at The Dentist's Office - Why It's a Possible Recipe for Brain Cancer
A study in the journal Cancer found people who had dental X-rays were more likely to develop meningioma. Those examined yearly or more often had 1.4 to 1.9 times the risk depending on age, and those given panorex exams before age 10 had 4.9 times the risk.
Healthcare
FDA updates for health professionals - 04/11/12
An FDA bulletin for health professionals rounds up recent actions: finasteride labeling now notes sexual adverse events that continued after the drug was stopped, Celexa dosing is clarified, drospirenone birth control pills get a blood-clot label change, and HeartMate II faces a Class 1 recall.
Healthcare
Dental X-rays may up brain tumor risk
Comparing 1,433 meningioma patients with 1,350 similar controls, researchers found people who had annual dental x-rays were twice as likely to be diagnosed with the usually non-malignant tumor. Elizabeth Claus says moderating exposure to the imaging may benefit some patients.
Healthcare
Should killing children be legally allowed as post-birth abortions?
This opinion piece objects to UK trials giving pregnant women the diabetes drug metformin, lists side effects it attributes to the drug, and links that to a Journal of Medical Ethics paper arguing that killing newborns is ethically no different from abortion.
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