Girl doctors get things done

At least, that’s the general finding of a new Harvard study (and thanks, Leftover, for sending it). According to the study, elderly hospitalized patients are less likely to die within a month of admission, and less likely to be readmitted within a month after discharge. (The study said that if boy doctors worked so well, …

Why did Obamacare enrollees vote for Trump?

See this article at Vox. From Sarah Kliff: Obamacare’s success in Whitley County and across Kentucky hasn’t translated into political support for the law. In fact, 82 percent of Whitley voters supported Donald Trump in the presidential election, even though he promised to repeal it.  

What happens if there’s a partial repeal on Obamacare?

From the Urban Institute: The number of uninsured people would rise from 28.9 million to 58.7 million in 2019, an increase of 29.8 million people (103 percent). The share of non-elderly people without insurance would increase from 11 percent to 21 percent, a higher rate of uninsurance than before the ACA because of the disruption …

Ladies? Guess who bears the brunt of Trump’s version of Obamacare?

You do. I wrote this for CT Health Investigative team.

WHO: Tax soda

The World Health Organization is urging governments worldwide to tax sodas, as a way of combating obesity. Whether countries will take that recommendation is another issue entirely. You can read more here. Let the discussions of Big Nanny begin, but personally? I don’t think this is such a bad idea.

Massachusetts’ mental health system is broken

Read the Boston Globe’s Spotlight’s latest effort. And thanks, Jac, for sending the link. And don’t think, just because you don’t live in Massachusetts, that things are cool in your state. They’re not. If other states had these kinds of reporters, they’d tell sadly similar stories.

Hundreds of U.S. hospitals follow Catholic directives on reproductive care

Which means hundreds of thousands of women are not getting appropriate care, even when their lives are in jeopardy. New reports from the ACLU and MergerWatch say that one in every six hospital beds in the U.S. is in a facility that complies with Catholic directives which prohibit a range of reproductive health care services. The report, …

We simply cannot afford to balance our budget on the backs of people with mental illness

Connecticut is in a budgetary free-fall, but we need to apply the knife verrry carefully. We pay now, or we pay later, particularly when we cut programs for people with mental health issues. Connecticut is a leader in preventing and ending homelessness. Will this budget crisis set us back? Depends on how we make our cuts. I …

How to provide Medicare for all

Leftover sends this, a Marcia Angell column from the Boston Globe, that explains how we can get precisely what the majority of us want, a federally-funded health care system. Single payer now. Single payer forever. amen.

What if we treat guns as we treat abortions?