“I’m really ashamed I let myself get caught up in dishonest and deceitful campaigns really just so a few corporations and their Wall Street masters could become richer than they already are. So now, in a certain way, I’m trying to make amends.”
Blogs, twitters and daily print help keep us abreast of breaking news. But there's nothing like an old-fashioned book to get inside a big sweeping tale. In the summer of 2007, when I was a fellow here, I had little more than a vision for a book that explored Big Pharma. Well, I also had some solid sources, a blockbuster drug, and a dramatic plot that spanned some 20 years. The hard part was finding a place to adequately tell the tale.
The WIC program, which offers nutrition education and food vouchers to low-income families, will soon get a healthy overhaul. But to cash in, food manufacturers have had to make some adjustments. Rachel Dornhelm reports.
Perplexed by the unusually high rates she was paying for her employer-provided health insurance, NPR member station reporter Sarah Varney set out to better understand the system. She discovered that small companies' rates are dictated by the demographics of their work force — and when the work force is small, it can spell complications, higher prices or both.
Not exactly about health issues but it is about the racial disparity in another field. It was shelved for about two months by the editor before it got published. So some information seems a bit outdated. But the basic idea is still there.
Before describing a few stories that have not received much play in the media, I'd like to mention a few publications by my Urban Institute colleagues that provide useful state and local information. One report shows, by Congressional district, the proportion of residents with various types of health coverage (uninsured, privately insured, or covered by Medicaid or other public programs).
Thomas Sullivan writes the Policy and Medicine blog. He also runs Rockpointe Corporation, a medical education company that works with nonprofits and for-profits to create continuing medical education (CME) programs. As company-sponsored CME and ghostwriting by companies has come under fire, Sullivan has become an outspoken advocate for medical education firms.
Between 2001 and 2006, the number of visits paid to emergency rooms in the United States increased annually by nearly 12 million, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in April 2009. In addition, the average time ER patients waited before being seen by a physician rose from 46 minutes in 2003 to 56 minutes in 2006. Although fewer hospitals reported having to divert ambulances to other facilities because of overcrowding, those that did reported spending more hours on average on diversion.
Stan Dorn, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, says that in the game of health care reform legislation, "We are in the playoffs."
The players are largely Democrats and the few Republicans who are not opposing reforms outright. Here is a roundup of the agreements and debates in Washington, D.C., as well as a few story ideas, which Dorn outlined in this morning's seminar with the National Health Journalism Fellows.
