Excerpt – Driven by a family history of disease and his own experience with prostate cancer, [Michael] Milken, the onetime junk-bond wizard whose spectacular downfall on securities charges led to a 22-month prison term in the 1990s, has spent the last three decades trying to advance medical science so that people “can find cures to life-threatening diseases within their own lifetimes.” [..] [KFF] Is the U.S. too slow in reaching cures? [Milken] A train today in Europe or Asia can travel at 200 miles an hour, but the average train in the U.S. travels at the same speed as 100 years ago because you … Read More
All posts by Anupam
“At the South by Southwest conference in March, where health startups displayed their products, there was a near-religious conviction that AI could rebuild health care, offering apps and machines that could diagnose and treat all kinds of illnesses, replacing doctors and nurses. Unfortunately, in the mental health space, evidence of effectiveness is lacking. Few of the many apps on the market have independent outcomes research showing they help; most haven’t been scrutinized at all by the FDA. Though marketed to treat conditions such as anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and depression, or to predict suicidal tendencies, many warn users (in small print) that they … Read More
“Introduction Epidemiological research on chronic pain (pain lasting ≥3 months) and high-impact chronic pain (HICP) (chronic pain associated with substantial restrictions in life activities, including work, social, and self-care activities) in the US has increased substantially since the release of the Institute of Medicine (currently the National Academy of Medicine) report on pain in 2011 and the Department of Health and Human Services National Pain Strategy (NPS) in 2016. [..] we used data from the 2019-2020 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Longitudinal Cohort (NHIS-LC) to determine the IRs [incidence rates] of chronic pain across demographic groups to refine our understanding of … Read More
“Introduction During the last half of the 2010s, life expectancy for college-educated persons continued to increase, while life expectancy for adults without a college education decreased. This crisis in the health of adults who do not have a college degree rose to national attention due largely to the opioid crisis. Initially, the opioid crisis devastated predominantly White communities in the midwestern and north-central states of the US, but eventually spread to other communities and currently disproportionately affects Black and Latino populations. However, a closer analysis reveals that mortality rates for adults who were not college-educated increased for many causes of … Read More
“Introduction In 1985, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Margaret M. Heckler issued the Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health, also known as the Heckler Report. The landmark report found that the Black population had strikingly higher mortality rates than the White population, resulting in almost 60 000 excess deaths a year relative to the White population. Race offers no intrinsic biological reason for those categorized as Black individuals to have worse outcomes than White individuals, indicating therefore that these disparities are driven by the burden of acquired risk factors, influence of … Read More
“Introduction Although cancer screening has been shown to reduce cancer-related mortality and morbidity, there is increasing recognition that it can also be harmful and burdensome, especially for older adults. The benefits of cancer screening typically lag by 10 or more years for breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer screenings, whereas the harms and burdens of these screenings—which include complications from screening and follow-up tests, overdiagnosis and overtreatment of clinically unimportant cancers, psychological stress from false-positive results, diverted attention away from other health conditions—occur in the short term. Guidelines recommend against routine cancer screening for older adults for whom the harms outweigh the benefits, … Read More
Why predictions of an imminent economic revolution are overstated Excerpt – [..] in the 1960s Robert Fogel published work about America’s railways that would later win him a Nobel Prize in economics. Many thought that rail transformed America’s prospects, turning an agricultural society into an industrial powerhouse. In fact, it had a very modest impact, Fogel found, because it replaced technology—such as canals—that would have done just about as good a job. The level of per-person income that America achieved by January 1st 1890 would have been reached by March 31st 1890 if railways had never been invented. Of course, … Read More
“Primary care is where most people have relationships with a health professional, where more than one-third of all health care visits happen, and the only part of the health system that demonstrably produces longer lives and more equity. However, primary care is experiencing widespread and longstanding shortages and skyrocketing rates of burnout and moral injury. Primary care physician turnover, often associated with burnout, is estimated to cost CMS nearly one billion dollars annually. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than one-third of family physicians reported frequent burnout. Since the pandemic, primary care physicians are stepping up to meet patient needs even … Read More
“A new rulemaking by the Biden administration seeks to lessen the harmful effects of abortion bans by protecting certain health data from being used to prosecute both clinicians and patients. But in the current draft, the rulemaking is designed to reinforce the privacy of reproductive health in states where abortion is legal and does little for those seeking abortion in states where it is illegal. Further, some states, like Idaho, are implementing a law that makes it illegal to travel out of state for an abortion, effectively blocking its citizens from the potential benefits of this rulemaking. The draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, titled … Read More
What a subway killing reveals about New York City’s revolving-door approach to mental illness and homelessness. “There are more than two hundred thousand residents of New York City living with severe mental illness; roughly five per cent of them are homeless. That’s thirteen thousand people with schizophrenia, major depressive and bipolar disorders, or other significant mental- or behavioral-health diagnoses, all of whom regularly spend the night at a shelter, in the subway, on the street. They’re the ones you recognize—the people whom, for the past fifty years, every mayor has either tried to help, harass, or hide from view. Rudy … Read More