Lack of health insurance kills

Via Echidne, Medical News Today reports:

A new report by a major US cancer charity has found that uninsured Americans are less likely to survive cancer, less likely to be screened for it, and more likely to have an advanced stage of the disease once they are diagnosed, compared with Americans on health insurance.

The study, which examines the link between health insurance status and cancer treatment and survival, will appear in the January-February edition of the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and is the work of researchers from the American Cancer Society (ACS), led by Dr Elizabeth Ward, managing director, surveillance research at the ACS.

Other studies have already suggested that Medicaid and uninsured patients are more likely to be diagnosed with cancers that are more advanced, mostly because they can't afford to buy preventative services such as cancer screening.

This report from the ACS takes a closer look at the link between insurance status and cancer care, and takes into account a number of demographic, race, and socioeconomic factors.

More Arnold

Oakland Tribune:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his allies are scrambling to keep his health care reform plan from collapsing amid an ever widening — and increasingly contentious — rift between two of the most politically important special interests in the state: labor and business.

Earlier this week, the California Labor Federation — having walked out of negotiations earlier — launched an aggressive campaign accusing Schwarzenegger's plan of gouging the working class by requiring people to buy health insurance without enough subsidies.

Business groups lashed back, warning that unions risked blowing up nearly a year's worth of work on what many in Sacramento consider potentially the most significant legislation in decades.

The division has created a form of political checkmate for Schwarzenegger, who can either hold the line on employer taxes or try to subsidize more uninsured workers, which would likely require more taxes on employers. Either move willalienate someone.

"Health care is on life support," said Jack Pitney, political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. "I can't figure out how the governor can salvage this. It's difficult to reconcile the competing interests of business and labor."

Well, he could decide that people are more important than business, but this is Arnold we're talking about...

Infant Mortality Rising In The South As Government Aid Drops

Simply put: government can do things that no other entity can. Providing adequate health care to those who need it is one important example. That has been proved, all week, and Sunday's New York Times provides yet more proof:

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

Of course, there is a racial component, with blacks suffering an infant mortality rate more than double that of whites; and, needless to say, poverty is also seen as a key factor. In Mississippi, Republican Governor (and former Chairman of the Republican National Committee) Haley Barbour's policy of cuts in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, along with a deliberately increased complexity of enrollment, are specifically blamed. Punish the poor. It's the Republican way.

This report comes after a week in which the Toronto Star reported that:

Health outcomes for patients in Canada are as good as or better than in the United States, even though per capita spending is higher south of the border, suggest Canadian and U.S. researchers who crunched data from 38 studies.

The findings were published in the inaugural edition of Open Medicine, a new online medical journal launching Wednesday in the aftermath of a rift last year between some editors and the publisher of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"In looking at patients in Canada with a specific diagnosis compared to Americans with the same diagnosis, in Canada patients had at least as good an outcome as their American counterparts – and in many situations, a better health outcome," said one of the 17 authors, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a cardiologist and clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

And Jerome a Paris, on Daily Kos, reporting about his own personal experience, lauded France's socialized system.

Our own wonderful system now has us ranked as having only the 42nd best infant mortality rate in the world, which puts us two behind our politically repressed and economically depressed southern neighbor, Cuba.

Of course, the Senate Republicans last week made their own contribution to our health care crisis, by blocking Democratic attempts to lower the price of prescription drugs for senior citizens.

For the young or old, on health care, as on everything else, it is abundantly clear: government help is needed, but the Republicans care less about the health of people than about the bottom lines of their corporate masters.

National Health Insurance Works!

You know that tired old argument about our health care system being superior to nationalized systems? Well, guess what...

Toronto Star:

Health outcomes for patients in Canada are as good as or better than in the United States, even though per capita spending is higher south of the border, suggest Canadian and U.S. researchers who crunched data from 38 studies.

The findings were published in the inaugural edition of Open Medicine, a new online medical journal launching Wednesday in the aftermath of a rift last year between some editors and the publisher of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"In looking at patients in Canada with a specific diagnosis compared to Americans with the same diagnosis, in Canada patients had at least as good an outcome as their American counterparts – and in many situations, a better health outcome," said one of the 17 authors, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a cardiologist and clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Oh well. The health insurance industry will just have to come up with some other lames excuse for its continued existence.