Insights

<p>Health care reform, and the ideological, political and public health battles that surrounded it, reached a fever pitch in the media by the time the legislation reached the House of Representatives in March. Many members of ReportingonHealth were watching and chronicling these events closely. Here, a cross-section of reporters discusses their experience working on these complex stories.</p>

<p><em>Cross posted, with permission, from <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/marylou">Mary Lou Fulton's</a> blog <a href="http://mediaoptimist.wordpress.com/">The Media Optimist</a>:</em></p>

<p>One doctor allowed her clinics in Santa Ana, California, to be used as front operations for selling highly addictive painkillers.</p> <p>Another doctor agreed to be paid $2,000 a month for the use of his registration with the DEA so that the front operations could keep up their supply.</p> <p>Another doctor was willing to rent his registration for half that.</p> <p>All of them were caught red-handed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Medical Board of California investigations are not made public, but, so far, none of them have been disciplined in California.</p>

<p>Devoted readers of Antidote's <em>Doctors Behaving Badly</em> posts might get the impression that all doctors have trouble cutting straight, prescribing properly or keeping their hands out of their patients' underwear.</p> <p>Of course, these doctors are a small, but pungent, sore on an otherwise healthy body of professionals working diligently help cure what ails us. I received an email this week that proved to me just how small the world of dangerous doctors is.</p> <p>It was within minutes of my sending out a <em>Doctors Behaving Badly</em> about Dr. Gary W. Hall in Phoenix.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/CHBLOW-BIO.html">Charles M. Blow</a> documents that President Obama's sales job for the health care reform law has so far resulted in his lowest approval ratings on health care (34%) since taking office. Blow writes that: "This underscores the current fight for the soul of this country. It's not just a tug of war between left and right. It's a struggle between the mind and the heart, between evidence and emotions, between reason and anger, between what we know and what we believe."</p>

<p>A quick heads up on some health data now available from the U.S. Department Veterans Affairs, pulled from the innards of a just released (and lengthy)&nbsp; <a href="http://www4.va.gov/OPEN/docs/open_govt_plan.pdf">"open government" report</a>. This should be of interest to journalists who have a V.A. medical facility in their community. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Veterans_Affairs_medical_facilitie… a list</a> of V.A. medical facilities in the United States.)</p><p>From the report:</p>

<p>Here's something a doctor should hope to never hear after performing surgery:</p> <p>"Doc, my eye feels like mayonnaise."</p> <p>That was the assessment of an 81-year-old patient operated on by Dr. Gary W. Hall, a Phoenix ophthalmologist.</p> <p>The patient had cataracts in both eyes, but her vis

<p>When word hit the grapevine that the <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-5-drug-pushers-running-clinic-were-far-saints">Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center</a> in Santa Ana had prescription painkillers for the asking, the place couldn't keep them in stock.</p>

<p>Radio reporter and freelance writer Nathanael Johnson followed <a href="http://californiawatch.org/health-and-welfare/more-women-dying-pregnanc… fascinating story</a> on maternal mortality for <em>California Watch</em> with <a href="http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/after-death-childbirth-family-woun… piece about a few of the families</a> left behind when women died from pregnancy-related causes.</p>

<p>The CDC today released <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5912a2.htm">some surprising MMWR statistics</a> on H1N1/swine flu vaccination rates around the United States today. The regional variation, especially for children under 17, is striking, particularly amid news that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR20100… than half of the nearly 230 million vaccine doses</a> available to Americans have been used, leaving a staggering surplus that's soon to expire.</p>