The Health of the Nation: State By State

The United Health Foundation graded the health of each state and ranked them according to criteria they set. They looked at many different factors. This list comes out every year. Vermont is the healthiest state, while Mississippi comes in as the least healthy state. I don't believe that the data is a result of the physical location or anything about the place in general. But it is indicative of the lifestyle choices of certain areas. For example many people in Vermont are conscious of the outdoors and they hike and mountain climb a lot. While in Mississippi they are known for their very good but unhealthy fried foods. The article goes into detail on many things. Enjoy the article.

Vermont's on top and Mississippi's on the bottom of the United Health Foundation rankings. What factors were considered?

by Zoe Galland

Minnesota residents drink too much, but they have a low premature death rate. Mississippians don't overindulge, but only a fifth of the population has health insurance. And Vermont seems to be under a lucky star—few uninsured residents, a very low rate of infectious diseases, and a low premature death rate.

These are some of results revealed in the 18th annual America's Health Rankings, a report comparing Americans' health, state by state. It was released by the United Health Foundation (UHF) Nov. 5. The UHF, which was founded by the UnitedHealth group in 1999, publishes the report in partnership with the American Public Health Assn. and Partnership for Prevention.

The UHF said that Americans' overall health has declined by 0.3% as measured by key health indicators, despite progress made in several areas such as reduced cancer rates. It cited factors such as obesity, an increasing number of uninsured people, and the "persistence of risky health behaviors such as tobacco use and binge drinking."

Continue reading the article here.

No Sex In Health Insurance

Since health insurance is such a boring subject, I thought I would make it more interesting with this article by Dr. Ruth. It talks about how sex therapy should be covered by health insurance. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I do agree with a lot of Dr. Ruth's concepts in this article. How on Earth could you NOT agree with Dr. Ruth? With that said, I hope you enjoy this article.

Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer

With all the talk about health insurance in the news these days, most of it having to do with the 40 million or so people who have no health insurance whatsoever, I know that the subject of the paucity of health insurance policies that cover sex therapy is not high on most people's radar. But it should be.

To many people, sex is considered a frill, something that is enjoyable to engage in, but certainly not necessary. Just look at all the fuss that was made about the issue of health insurance covering Viagra. While I can't compare maintaining sexual functioning to keeping people free of cancer or removing a bursting appendix, this is an area that shouldn't be considered expendable either, especially to businesses.

It's widely accepted that an employee who is in a stable relationship is more productive than one who is constantly on the prowl for a partner. The dating process is never smooth and the emotional conflicts that pop up in the single employee's life do have an effect on how much attention he or she is paying to work duties as compared to the time devoted to thinking about personal matters.

Continue reading this article here.

Swiss Study Finds Marijuana Use Alone May Benefit Some Teens, U.S. Doctor Disagrees

No comment other than what the article says. Enjoy.

By Tina Benitez

Teens that use cannabis may function better than teen tobacco-users, and appear to be more socially driven and have fewer psychosocial problems than those who do not use either substance, according to a Swiss survey.

Researchers at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland surveyed 5,263 students, including 455 who smoke marijuana only, 1,703 who smoke marijuana and tobacco and 3,105 who smoked neither one.

The survey, which will be published in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that marijuana-only smokers had better relationships with friends, better grades and were more likely to play sports than teens who smoked tobacco and those who abstained from both substances.

A U.S. substance abuse expert disagreed with the study and said U.S. teens should not be encouraged to use marijuana, particularly since teenagers’ brains are still developing at this time.

Continue reading the article here.

Guiliani's flip-flop on health insurance for kids.

This is an article from Slate about Guiliani and his experience with health care as mayor of New York. Rudy has made a habit of chastising 'socialized medicine' as a rallying cry for the base of the Republicans. He also had a campaign ad that said he would have died from his Prostate cancer had he been involved in a government sponsored health care system instead of the US system.

This article paints a different story about Rudy's positions as Mayor of New York when he was first diagnosed with cancer. Before he was diagnosed with cancer he had little interest in the health care system. After he was diagnosed, he attempted to expand New York City's role in health care by expanding their program by three times without caring how much it cost the taxpayer. The system in place is called Health Stat and increased spending on government sponsored health care to children and adults who did not qualify for medicaid by $390 million over four years.

This is another example of the difficulty that Republicans have in considering him to be a conservative candidate. While he says the right things now, his record shows a history of being very similar to the Democratic positions on important platform issues. Hopefully it will all work out, but if this part of his record is any indication, I do not think he will be able to beat Hillary Clinton for the White House after having positions that are so close to hers.

It is a good article. Enjoy.

Sick Man

Guiliani's flip-flop on health insurance for kids.

By Sara Mosle

In his campaign for president, Rudolph Giuliani keeps suggesting that his experience as a prostate cancer survivor makes him uniquely qualified to evaluate the American health care system. To judge from his recent pronouncements, the lesson he learned as a cancer patient is that America has the best health care system in the world. Indeed, Giuliani has implied that without it, he wouldn't have survived cancer. He thus sees little need, in his prescriptions for reform, for overhauling the system or greatly reducing the number of uninsured. What's odd about Giuliani's take is that it is diametrically opposed to what he said he learned from his prostate cancer in 2000, at the time of his actual diagnosis and treatment.

Before his illness, Giuliani the Mayor resembled Giuliani the Presidential Candidate. Both showed little interest in expanding coverage to New York's poor or uninsured, and both Giulianis gave only tepid support and financial backing to an S-CHIP-style program for New York's uninsured children. By Giuliani's own description, however, all that changed when he came face-to-face with his own mortality.

At a packed and emotional news conference in May 2000, in which he announced he was dropping out of the race for the U.S. Senate as a result of his illness, Giuliani admitted to suddenly seeing the world very differently. He said his illness had changed him and that he wanted to reach out to minority groups and the poor. Most important, he said, he had newfound respect, understanding, and empathy for the city's uninsured. It seems Giuliani couldn't feel people's pain until he, well—literally—felt people's pain. But once he had, he stated that extending health insurance coverage to more of the city's uninsured was his top goal for his remaining 18 months in office. ''One of the things that I felt from the beginning of [my illness] and continue to feel is a tremendous sense of compassion for the people that have to make decisions like this alone," he explained. "One of the things maybe that I can do is figure out how we accelerate making sure that people are covered."

Continue reading the article here.

Giuliani's healthcare figure outdated

Rudy Guiliani's campaign created a radio ad that indicated that his chances of survival from Prostate cancer were much higher in the USA system compared to the United Kingdom social system. This article from ABC indicates that there may be issues with the statistics that he used. The statistics used in the campaign are ten years old. Comparing the two systems is difficult because there may be other factors at play in the survivability of diseases rather than the system. While this article points out that the statistics Rudy used were old, it still says that survivability in the USA is higher than in the UK for Prostate cancer. The difference just is not as large as they claim in their campaign. While I agree with the premise that government run health care is a bad idea, I don't necessarily agree with pointing to specific instances such as this to prove the point. It is a well written article that I hope you enjoy.

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has made "socialized medicine" one of his favorite whipping boys on the campaign trail. But he is using a single, misleading, and outdated statistic to argue that the healthcare system in the United States is better than it is in the United Kingdom.

In a radio ad airing in New Hampshire, Giuliani says: "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States - 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England - only 44 percent, under socialized medicine."

Giuliani, who was diagnosed with cancer seven years ago, plucked the 10-year-old statistic from an article written by Dr. David Gratzer, an adviser to his campaign, in the 2007 summer issue of City Journal, an urban policy publication of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank much admired by the former New York City mayor.

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Beyond those health care numbers

Here is an article written by a Harvard professor. He goes over the argument that people for a government controlled health care system often mention. It is a fact that people in Canada have a higher life expectancy and lower infant death rate. However as this article points out, it is not necessarily a result of the health care system. Many proponents of the government system use these facts as 'proof' that the government controlled system is better. However other issues such as lifestyle and cultural issues also play into the differences in the statistics. Americans are typically more obese than their Canadian counterparts. This fact alone could result in dramatic differences in life expectancy and has nothing to do with the health care system. Anyway I agree with this author. Enjoy the article.

By N. Gregory Mankiw

Here are three true but misleading facts about health care that politicians and pundits in the United States love to use to frighten the public.

The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.

The differences are indeed significant. Life expectancy at birth is 2.6 years greater for Canadian men than for American men. Among women, Canadians outlive Americans by 2.3 years. Infant mortality in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 live births, compared with only 5.3 in Canada.

These facts are often taken as evidence for the inadequacy of the U.S. health system. But a recent study by June and Dave O'Neill, economists at Baruch College, from whom these numbers come, shows that the difference in health outcomes has more to do with broader social forces.

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Senate Passes New SCHIP Bill

The formalities are completed and the 'new' SCHIP bill will finally reach the president's desk for his signature. It is not changed and just like the last bill, this bill will be vetoed. The senate voted yesterday 64-30 to approve the bill. That is not as good as the previous vote of 67-30. This margin is not even veto proof in the senate either. The Congress needs to realize that passing legislation is not about vote counting. Passing legislation means coming up with something that everyone can agree to and making the country better. This bill is just another tax and spend mandate that our children will have to figure out how to support or cut some day. Congress needs to be cutting federal mandated programs instead of expanding them. Cutting federally funded programs is not popular and sometimes causes people to vote against representatives. But the unpopular thing is often the best thing to do for the good of the country. The president will veto this bill because it is still 35 billion dollars more than the 5 billion dollar increase that he wanted for this program. This CNN article explains the senate vote in detail. Enjoy the article.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate passed a new bill Thursday expanding a popular children's health insurance program, despite the lingering threat of a veto from President Bush.

The bill -- which boosts the number of low-income children covered by the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- was recently passed by the House, but without the veto-proof margin it received in the Senate.

Bush vetoed the first SCHIP bill and is expected to veto this one.

"There's a bill moving through Congress that's disguised as a bill to help children, but I think it's really a trick on the American people," the president said Wednesday.

The current program covers about 6 million children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid -- the federal health insurance program for the poor -- but who can't afford private insurance.

Continue reading this article here.