Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

We are deeply grateful for the multitude of people who have contacted us wanting to provide medical assistance. At this time, while we wish we could use all of the support so generously offered, we are unable to accommodate any volunteers without significant surgical or trauma training and experience.

We are in need of: orthopedic surgeons, trauma surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, OR nurses, post-op nurses, and surgical technicians.

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We are deeply grateful for the multitude of people who have contacted us wanting to provide medical assistance. As patients flood to our sites from Port-au-Prince, we're finding ourselves in need of both medical personnel and supplies. In particular, we need surgeons (especially trauma/orthopedic surgeons), ER doctors and nurses, and full surgical teams (including anesthesiologists, scrub and post-op nurses, and nurse anesthetists).

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The green-eyeshade meanies in the Congressional Budget Office took another whack at the public plan today, at least the one contained in the health reform bill passed by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions committee last June. Responding to queries from ranking member Michael Enzi (R-WY), CBO chief Doug Elmendorf noted on his blogthat "premiums for the public plan would typically be comparable to the average premiums of private plans offered in the insurance exchanges."

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In a comment on my previous post on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions reform bill, tcoyote explained some of the political thinking behind what seem like totally spurious cost projections. While I can readily accept tcoyote’s explanation of the pols’ efforts to ignore reality, I’m still politically innocent enough to want to know what the HELP bill might really cost. So I spent some time looking at the Congressional Budget Office report on the bill.
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Key members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee announced on Thursday what they claimed were dramatically improved cost and coverage estimates for the latest version of their health care reform bill.

Headed by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, HELP members (in a Muzak-marred conference call with reporters) stated that the revised bill would cost only $611 billion over ten years, a figure apparently computed by the CBO, and that with a further expansion of Medicaid would provide coverage for 97 percent of Americans.

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Each year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation selects 10 research articles that made a significant contribution to the policy arena. This year, the Foundation wants you to help winnow the selection.

The Foundation wants you to select the top 10 out of 25 articles, which it funded in 2008 and believes had major policy impact, affected their work and thinking, or stood out in some other way.

Since voting opened last week, nearly 1,000 votes across 46 states have been cast. Click here to vote. Voting ends December 23, and the final list will be published in January.

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Today is the Great American Smokeout, and while San Franciscans are doing their part to help people battle nicotine addiction, I became aware recently that not all the health insurance plans for our county workers in San Francisco -- nor in many other counties around California – were covering all of the smoking cessation benefits recommended by the Center for Disease Control.

The City of San Francisco has embraced a multi-faceted approach to reduce tobacco use, while protecting individuals from insurance coverage barriers as they battle their addiction to nicotine:

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The downturn in the economy, means lots of newly unemployed individuals will be asking what happens with their health insurance.

There are a number of online resources to help them understand their options under COBRA. Here are a few:

eHealthInsurance launched a new initiative, www.COBRAlearning.com, to education consumers about COBRA and alternatives health insurance for the newly unemployed. Accompanying the launch, was a survey (paid for by ehealthinsurance) that found many consumers don't know what COBRA is or what their options are after losing employment.

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I've had a couple of phone conversations with some of the physicians who regularly post on this site and have come away with some thoughts for a series of interviews with doctors and professionals running successful medical spas. It seems that there's an insatiable desire for more information on treatments, marketing, operations, and almost everything else that goes into organizing and running a successful cosmetic practice.

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This is Serenity. She has Lukemia.

Serenity, was diagnosed two days ago with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia . She's two.

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