Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

It’s always fun to see my friends beating each other up in public....and if you read down in the comments onthe post published yesterday you’ll see a significant dispute between Maggie Mahar and the Klepper/Kibbe/Lazsweski/Enthoven team (who I'm calling the Four Horsemen from now on). But I think that right now we need to change what we're talking about.

I'm with Maggie in that there is potentially more in terms of changing the payment system in the current bills than nothing, but it's not that much more than nothing. However, pressure from the the Four Horsemen and their fellow travelers on payment reform may increase that section of the bill as it gets worked outon the floor and in the Congressconference committee. Their pressure willalso serve notice that aware, sensible people are looking at the issues of payment and delivery reform.

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From the open text BMC family of journals comes a terrible but compelling article published in BMC International Health & Human Rights. The article is authored by Mario Incayawarand Sioui Maldonado-Bouchard, and is entitled The Forsaken Mental Health of the Indigenous Peoples -A Moral Case of Outrageous Exclusion in Latin America.

Here is the Abstract:

Background

Mental health is neglected in most parts of the world. For the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America, the plight is even more severe as there are no specific mental health services designed for them altogether. Given the high importance of mental health for general health, the status quo is unacceptable. Lack of research on the subject of Indigenous Peoples' mental health means that statistics are virtually unavailable. To illustrate their mental health status, one can nonetheless point to the high rates of poverty and extreme poverty in their communities, overcrowded housing, illiteracy, and lack of basic sanitary services such as water, electricity and sewage. At the dawn of the XXI century, they remain poor, powerless, and voiceless. They remain severely excluded from mainstream society despite being the first inhabitants of this continent and being an estimated of 48 million people. This paper comments, specifically, on the limited impact of the Pan American Health Organization's mental health initiative on the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America.

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So far, Congress' response to the health care crisis has been alarmingly disappointing in three ways. First, by willingly accepting enormous sums from health care special interests, our representatives have obligated themselves to their benefactors' interests rather than to those of the American people. More than 3,330 health care lobbyists - six for every member of Congress - contributed more than one-quarter of a billion dollars in the first and second quarters of 2009. A nearly equal amount has been contributed on this issue from non-health care organizations. This exchange of money prompted a Public Citizen lobbyist to comment, "A person can reach no other conclusion than this is a quid pro quo [this for that] activity."

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Well…..I have no words. Heidi is going to get a tattoo………on the side of her ankle ……a small heart……with Kye’s name written through it. Apparently it’s cute and "all the Mum’s are doing it"…………..well all the Dads are going out on Friday nights and having Latvian women do the hokey pokey on their laps………so I [...]

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Our nation's Founders created a pretty good system of government by starting from what they wanted to achieve, exemplified by the Bill of Rights, so perhaps we would be wise to base health care reform on a similar footing. Instead, Congress is doing its usual muddled process to produce legislation that is likely to make no one very happy, but at least tries to minimize the number of people made very unhappy. As is too often the case, it is easier to create straw men to attack than to address the real problems.
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Back in June, Atul Gawande, a Harvard trained surgeon, published a riveting article in the New Yorker about the physician community in McAllen Texas. If ever an article was strategically timed to influence the nation’s health policy debate, this was the one. His story was accompanied by a graphic showing a patient as an ATM machine. President Obama read it and put it on his staff’s reading list. Yet, it’s depressing how little impact Atul’s article has had on health reform.

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When the first laser lipolysis device was approved by the FDA it started a whole new revolution in the medical spa industry.

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Is your medical spa using a new vial of Botox for every patient?

Pity poor Senator Harry Reid. Not only is he facing an uphill reelection fight in Nevada, but as Majority Leader, he must reconcile the health care reform bills from the Finance and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees so as to attract sixty Senate votes. He’s guaranteed support from the more partisan Democrats, but to attract Democratic and one or two Republican centrists without losing liberals, he has to find ways to deal with two huge problems with the bills—and one giant red herring.

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One of my favorite journals, Perspectives on Biology & Medicine, has published its autumn issue, TOC available here. Among several interesting articles, my attention was immediately drawn to Mical Raz's The Painless Brain: Lobotomy, Psychiatry, and the Treatment of Chronic Pain and Terminal Illness. Raz does fascinating work in the history of psychiatry and psychosurgery, and it is particularly exciting to see her turn her attention to pain, my dissertation topic (although I am somewhat surprised to see it linked to terminal illness, because the vast majority of contemporary chronic pain sufferers are not terminally ill).

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