Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourney is the President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Before joining Robert Wood Johnson she taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Penn’s Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

Thanks to a new set of reports, we now know that where you live matters to your health. People who call Prince George’s County Maryland home are twice as likely to die prematurely from disease as their neighbors just across the line in Montgomery County. The data cut both ways. People who live in the healthiest counties, such as Montgomery or Howard County Maryland have a two-to-three times better chance of living longer than people who live in less healthy counties such as Prince Georges or Baltimore.
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I’m viewing the latest rumblings in the US health care debate from the confines of a clear but cold Britain, where the big news is that the country is joining the PIGS in entering economic meltdown—or at least being a lot more broke than it thought it was. (PIGS are Portugal, Greece, Ireland & Spain, not farm animals). And yet it appears that health reform is making if not a comeback then at least vigorous palpitations. The reason for this seems to be the strength that the Anthem Blue Cross/Wellpoint premium rises have imbued into the Administration.

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Some news in the world of Health 2.0 today where the worlds of patient communities and tracking tools come ever closer. (Those of you following my Health 2.0 “bubbles” chart know that “social networks” and “tools” are integrating. You can see more in the free exec sum of our report The Past & Future of Health 2.0)

PatientsLikeMe, which already does more tracking than most online communities with members recording their drugs, their symptoms, and much more, acquired ReliefInSite.

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This April 6–7, the Health 2.0 Europe conference will feature the many ways in whichWeb 2.0 tools are providing innovative solutions to, amongst others, our fundamental need for self-expression, known more recently as “user-generated content”.

Several panels will refer to these issues, but we will focus in this post on the Hospital and Payers’ panel. Payers want to ensure that their patients are being oriented to good care. Hospitals want to know that they are being considered “justly”.The Health 2.0 panel will include demonstrations byGuide Santé (France) and Patient Opinion (UK), both web 2.0 sites created by physicians concerned by patient satisfaction with hospitals and clinics. Payerslike the UK NHSand Big-Direkt from Germany will participate in the conversation and Big-Direkt will also demo their new online tools.

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Are we finally ready to close the door on the much-disputed link between the MMR vaccine and autism?

On January 30, Britain’s General Medical Council ruled that Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in conducting his research that established a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. And yesterday, the British medical journal Lancet finally retracted the resulting 1998 study authored by Wakefield that helped drive MMR vaccination rates in the U.K. down to the point where in 2008, measles was officially declared “endemic” in the country.
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Just occasionally we get a really heartfelt comment on THCB that is passionate and rational, and reminds us why for all the bile spewed about the topic the essential partof the health care bill—making insurance available to everyone—is really important. This comment from CF Mother was left on my post “Thinking the unthinkable” on Friday. And of course, this could happen to anyone—including you. And frankly the Democrats need to do a better job explaining this—Matthew Holt

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One day before 2009 passed into history, the much anticipated final definition of “meaningful use” was released by CMS and ONC, 556 pages and 136 pages, respectively. The blogosphere experts rushed to summarize the contents, some accurate and some less so, and just like everything that has to do with health care reform, for every rule making there are a dozen new questions being raised by the already thoroughly confused stakeholders at large.
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Is there anyone left, on either side of the political spectrum, who wants the Senate health care bill to pass?

Republican Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour had this to say about the Senate bill last week, “This health care plan is like mackerel in the moonlight. Longer that it's out there, the more that it stinks.”

And yesterday, MoveOn said this about the Senate Democratic health care bill in an email to its members, "America needs real health care reform—not a massive giveaway to the insurance companies. Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressives should block this bill until it's fixed."

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I'm excited to announce the latest program coming from Health 2.0 - The Health 2.0 Show with Indu & Matthew! This monthly webinar series will focus on news from the Health 2.0 community, a look at some cool new technologies, and interviews with industry leaders.

January 19, 2010
11 am PT / 2 pm ET
We’ll start the series off with a look at what lies in store for Health 2.0 in 2010 – including updates from the Advisors, the Accelerator and exciting new partnerships.

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So today’s news is that the gang of ten have come up with something. (If you haven’t been following along, the gang of ten are the five “liberal” Democrats and the five DINOs asked by Harry Reid to come up with something to break the deadlock and get some type of compromise that will pass the Senate). More details are here from Brian Beutler at TPM

So it might vanish like a Clinton-eratrial balloon, or it might be a stayer, but the core of the new concept is to allow the 55–64 crowd to buy into Medicare, and to ask/allow/mandatea non-profit insurer(s) to provide a substitute public option. Exactly what the second point means is unclear to me. It may be to be some collapsing of Kent Conrad’s notion of the cooperative with an extension of the Federal Employees’ Plan (presumably minus the for-profit carriers) and somehow cramming that into the exchange. Of course providing something like the choice among private plans that Federal Employees now get was at the heart of Ron Wyden’s plan. We’ll see if it can last a couple of days scrutiny, or the wrath of the House Democrats.

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