Primary Care Category Archives — Page 2 of 72 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

December 28, 2020

How does U.S. improve its health care if the president excuses wrongdoing?

Leave it to the extreme actions of the current White House occupant to disprove Shakespeare and the adage that the quality of mercy cannot be strained. Some of the dozens of President Trump’s latest acts of clemency, with more likely to be granted, are sending bad messages of who gets ahead in a rapacious U.S. health care system.

Their elected representatives are supposed to be among the chief guardians of Americans’ health interests, which is why President Trump’s excusing of the wrongdoing of a trio of onetime GOP congressman has infuriated many.

Two of the pardoned House members (Duncan Hunter of San Diego and Steve Stockman of Texas) were caught with their mitts in their donations or campaign funds, one spending sizable sums on family vacations, theater tickets, and an extramarital affair.

December 27, 2020

Coronavirus vaccinations lag behind plan as experts track contagious variant

by Patrick A. Malone

Even as medical scientists have detected a new, potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus that also may pose greater risks to children, the high hopes for a faultless roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines are getting tempered with unhappy doses of reality.

Roughly 1 million Americans have been vaccinated already, most with a product from Pfizer and some with a vaccine from Moderna.

That is good news to start. It may, however, also start to raise concerns about the plans to inoculate more than 300 million Americans, many with a two-shot vaccine. That’s because Trump Administration officials had forecast with great confidence in recent days that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated before 2020’s end.

December 24, 2020

A wish for this somber holiday: gratitude for those who helped others, and an end to the attacks on science

by Patrick A. Malone

These may be some of the most somber holidays in many Americans’ recent memory. They also may challenge the faithful to translate seasonal religious messages about hope, joy, compassion, and caring for others into practical action, particularly in how the nation treats people who have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

While reaching out, past the confines of our homes and health safety measures, and while feasting and enjoying gifts and the merriment of the year’s end, can we also express our gratitude to those whose toil has sustained us through an awful 2020?

Can we say thanks to essential workers — the folks who made the groceries run, who kept big stores humming, who grew, raised, and harvested what we eat, and who made the magic, so endless boxes of needed and desired stuff magically showed up on doorsteps?

December 23, 2020

Patients get unexpected year-end cheer — new curbs on surprise medical bills

by Patrick A. Malone

The do-little U.S. Senate and the House gave Americans an unexpected cause for glee at year’s end. Lawmakers approved long sought relief from “surprise medical bills,” the charges, too often whopping in size, that individuals and families rack up for care from all kinds of providers that their health insurers have not approved.

Multiple legislative committees and influential lawmakers compromised so Congress could mostly resolve this consumer nightmare as part of the 5,600-page bill that both provides desperately needed coronavirus relief and funds the government.

The legislative action exempted one costly area considered still too complex and fraught for Congress to deal with — pricey emergency transport by ambulances. The vehicular services, for which consumers can get staggering bills, are run by so many different providers, including local governments, and operate under such a patchwork of regulations that lawmakers decided against dealing with this extreme expense.

December 21, 2020

With virus toll grim and shots starting, knowledge about vaccines can be key

by Patrick A. Malone

The nation now has two potent vaccines to battle the coronavirus pandemic, and the federally approved Covid-19 vaccines are quickly getting into the arms of front-line health workers and vulnerable residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Experts have hailed the speedy arrival of clinically tested vaccines as a turning point in the world’s response to the novel coronavirus.

But will the vaccine roll-out be fast enough and accepted by enough Americans to halt Covid-19’s unchecked savaging of the nation?

December 20, 2020

Plutocratic Sacklers say sorry but not our fault, when taken to task in hearing

by Patrick A. Malone

A key component of the American legal system, in the criminal and civil systems, is the opportunity afforded to those most harmed to see those implicated in awful situations take responsibility for their conduct. It can be a key moment for the aggrieved to find closure and a measure of justice.

December 18, 2020

Fraudsters boost senior-care nightmares with ‘audacious’ hospice scams

by Patrick A. Malone

With coronavirus infections and deaths rising anew in worrisome fashion from coast to coast, matters could not get worse with the nation’s long-term care, right? Guess again. Profit-mongering and “audacious, widespread fraud” apparently has run amok in hospice care in the Golden State.

Because California, alas, too often serves as a trend-setting locale, patients, their loved ones, clinicians, regulators, and politicians may wish to take heed of an investigation published by the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper reported that too many older, sick, and injured patients have been gulled into signing up for unneeded and undelivered services meant for folks at the end of their lives:

“[M]any [hospice patients] are unwitting recruits [of] unscrupulous providers who bill Medicare for hospice services and equipment for ‘terminally ill’ patients who aren’t dying. Intense competition for new patients — who generate $154 to $1,432 a day each in Medicare payments — has spawned a cottage industry of illegal practices, including kickbacks to crooked doctors and recruiters who zero in on prospective patients at retirement homes and other venues … The exponential boom in providers has transformed end-of-life care that was once the realm of charities and religious groups into a multibillion-dollar business dominated by profit-driven operators. Nowhere has that growth been more explosive, and its harmful side effects more evident, than in Los Angeles County. The county’s hospices have multiplied sixfold in the last decade and now account for more than half of the state’s roughly 1,200 Medicare-certified providers, according to a Times analysis of federal health care data.”

December 16, 2020

Consultants apologize for opioid hype, as pharma payments take more fire

by Patrick A. Malone

Heaps of ignominy are not in short order for parties that played sketchy roles in fostering the nation’s deadly opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis. The stain has spread now to one of corporate America’s most-favored advisors — the giant McKinsey consulting group.

The firm has issued a rare public mea culpa for its work with Purdue Pharmaceuticals, a family-run drug maker that has gained notoriety, even among Big Pharma companies, for how it hyped its powerful painkiller OxyContin. The relentless push to sell that drug, officials have asserted, provided a ghastly template for peddling opioids, triggering abuse, addiction, debilitation, and death for hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent times.

Purdue was a McKinsey client, and the consultants now are re-examining their advice to the drug maker on how to fire up OxyContin sales and whether these suggestions fell short of the firm’s own standards. The New York Times, to its credit, dug into records to detail the consultants’ unacceptable conduct, reporting:

December 13, 2020

Exposure to the bug, not genetics, explains why the coronavirus has hit black and brown communities so hard

by Patrick A. Malone

A growing body of research is better explaining why the novel coronavirus has taken such a terrible toll on communities of color and especially black Americans. The evidence underscores the urgency for the nation to address racial injustice and inequities, particularly in health care.

As the New York Times reported, experts analyzing mountains of data are seeing that “there is no innate vulnerability to the virus among black and Hispanic Americans … Instead, these groups are more often exposed because of social and environmental factors.” The newspaper found this in talking to experts about their multiple, often sizable studies:

“The[ir] new findings do not contradict an enormous body of research showing that black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to be affected by the pandemic, compared with white people. The coronavirus is more prevalent in minority communities, and infections, illnesses and deaths have occurred in these groups in disproportionate numbers … [But among] many other vulnerabilities, black and Hispanic communities and households tend to be more crowded; many people work jobs requiring frequent contact with others and rely on public transportation. Access to health care is poorer than among white Americans, and rates of underlying conditions are much higher. ‘To me, these results make it clear that the disparities in mortality that we see are even more appalling,’ said Jon Zelner, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who led one of the new studies.”

December 11, 2020

U.S. collars owners’ outlandish claims for flying ’emotional support’ animals

by Patrick A. Malone

Um, no, federal regulators have decided: The nation’s skies no longer will be a sort of bad airborne set for a pop psychology version of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Instead, owners of so-called emotional support animals must keep their menagerie off commercial flights.

The federal Transportation Department has issued new rules halting what had become, in pre-coronavirus times, a flashpoint between airlines, their crews, and a preponderance of passengers. They were in growing conflicts with owners of critters they claimed they could not be without.

Airlines complained that they were barraged by not just a few, legitimate requests to board bona fide, trained service dogs (as shown in AKC photo, above) but also by hundreds of thousands of demands for what effectively were pets to be flown in the human spaces for free. The companies successfully turned away reptiles, ferrets, rodents, spiders — and even in one case a performance artist’s sizable peacock.