If ever there was a killer app for patients, this is it. Best of all, it’s free. iTriage is an iPhone app (now available for Android, too) that empowers you to get the most appropriate, affordable, timely, and quality care possible. This app, created by an ER doc, proves paternalistic medicine is so 20th century.
The wait for 4-year interim high-risk pools to provide temporary health insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions should be over this week. That’s according to the time frame laid out in health care reform legislation. The reality is less certain.
Well, good to see we’re making progress. Or not. The annual Commonwealth Fund study reveals no movement in the US’s unenviable healthcare position. We covered this topic extensively in a previous post, and what it means for you the consumer and patient. But here’s the lowdown.
When food safety legislation hinges on resistance to a tagged-on drug reimportation amendment, you know something’s not right. Senator Bryon Dorgan has made a last-ditch attempt to help his constituents before he retires, by legalizing less expensive prescription medication options. Unfortunately the political establishment and its cash cow lobbyists are dead set against it.
It seems ironic that just as we eradicated smallpox, a scourge of the early 20th century, a new threat was incubating: HIV. New research shows that those two occurences might actually be related. In the 1950s, the smallpox vaccine was beginning to be withdrawn, as the disease it prevented had been conquered throughout the world. HIV is thought to have begun in the ’50s. But there is more than circumstantial evidence linking the two phenomena.
A recent study demonstrated that immunity to smallpox, triggered by the smallpox vaccine, can actually inhibit replication of the AIDS virus. So foregoing the smallpox immune response may have allowed AIDS to spread freely. While it’s too soon to recommend the long-retired smallpox vaccine to prevent HIV, this research provides the most promising — and ridiculously simple — treatment for early-stage HIV infection to date.
