True Cost of War in Iraq: Provider Fatigue

As I mentioned earlier this week, prior Health Politics pieces have catalogued the true cost of the war in Iraq. March 19’s Newsweek, mentioned in The Wall Street Journal this week, identifies yet another cost with its coverage of a military study of the mental health of caregivers in Iraq. High or very high degrees […]

Bob Woodruff: The Exception to the Rule

Back in April 2006, I did a Health Politics program titled “The True Cost of the War in Iraq.” In the wake of Bob Woodruff’s ABC Special “To Iraq and Back;” plus the release of his and his wife Lee’s book, “In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing;” and especially following the […]

Why Water Needs an Al Gore of Its Own

If you ask any United Nations official “What is our scarcest global resource?” he or she will reply without hesitation, “Water.” But surprisingly, there’s little global coordination to address the problem, even as it has rapidly accelerated. Water is charting the same course as did Global Warming. In the latter case, the facts, and some […]

Time to Make Something Happen

As you’ll see in this week’s Health Politics program, the threat of a cholera epidemic in the United States is not huge — although we came close after Hurricane Katrina — but many developing nations struggle with it constantly. The bacterium that causes the disease lives and thrives in contaminated water, and once a victim […]

HPV Vaccine and the Recent JAMA Study: Knowing the Numbers

The recent study on Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) prevalence in U.S. women (published in the Feb. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association) added fuel to the fire in the debate over whether states should mandate the vaccine for middle-school-aged girls. The numbers were dramatic — the overall HPV prevalence among U.S. […]

Edison the Sponge

My brother-in-law, Dan O’Connell, sent along a link worth sharing with all those interested in reforming and improving our health care system. It’s produced by Frank Attwood, who makes a living these days “channeling” the life and insights of Thomas Edison. I was especially taken by two clips. One defining the inventor as a sponge, […]

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