Americans are constantly being told they need a primary care physician. Supposedly the key to good health is having a close relationship with your family doctor. According to a research paper from Stanford and Harvard medical schools we live longer in areas with high concentrations of primary care physicians:
Category: Health Reform
Internships Boost Health Care Workers in Rural CO
I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. My parents house was 19 miles East of the Colorado border. The adjacent Colorado counties were so sparsely populated that the ranches were open range. There were no fences. The local hospital where I got my tonsils removed only had 9 beds. The hospital is county-owned, as is the long-term care facility. Some of the local health care providers are subsidized by the county, with free office space and guaranteed incomes. Otherwise, the only health care providers would be miles away in other counties.
FDA Approves Fecal Transplants as though it were a Drug
Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) are difficult to treat and can be deadly. CDI is an infection of the gut when the gut bacteria are thrown out of balance and populated with Clostridium difficile rather than a healthy biome. The standard treatment is antibiotics, which can also wreck beneficial gut biome. CDI often is recurrent, coming back time and time again.
Friday Links
- Launch price for a course of treatment for Type 1 diabetes approaches $200,000. We predicted the IRA bill would lead to higher launch prices. But even we are shocked by this one.
- Anthony Fauci to be deposed in a lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor speech.
- Hospital care at home: outcomes are actually better, but it’s scheduled to go away when the (Covid) public health emergency goes away. (NYT)
- Rare and unusual Covid side effects: hairy tongues, purple toes, welts that sprout on the face, and more. (NYT)
- “Apparently, to the people that write [CDC] guidelines, more people dying of COVID is less of a concern if the deaths are more racially balanced.”
- Over half of Covid deaths are among people who have been vaccinated.
- Scotland is considering these reforms to the National Health Service:
An option to “Pause funding of new development/drugs” unless they can be proved to save the NHS money… Stopping care services altogether and instead sending patients home for care.