Statistics

August 15, 2018

NFL settlements raise new questions on head trauma and Parkinson’s and ALS

The National Football League, which long has resisted the growing reality that game-related head blows can cause major harms to its players, may be providing yet new and unintended warnings about the sustained damages of concussions.

The Los Angeles Times reported that pro football’s pay-outs, as part of its billion-dollar head-injuries settlement with NFL players and their union, have been surprisingly high in cases where retirees have claimed damages due to Parkinson’s and ALS.

Parkinson’s, the newspaper noted, is a “progressive movement disorder that produces tremors, impaired movement, and slurred speech.” It is “marked by the buildup of proteins called Lewy bodies in brain cells.” ALS, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a condition affecting “nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and ultimately results in a fatal inability to initiate and control muscle movement.”

July 29, 2018

With 100 deaths a day, when will the U.S. renew campaign for safer motoring?

by Patrick A. Malone

How outraged and motivated to political action might you be if an avoidable disaster in a week claimed the lives of all the youngsters in your kids’ school? How upset might Americans be if a calamity wiped out in 24 hours seven NBA professional basketball teams, or two pro NFL squads?

David Leonhardt, associate editor of the New York Times Editorial Page, threw a powerful jab in his Op-Ed at lawmakers and regulators who, as always, seem to be shrugging off not only the summer deadliest season but also the rising annual toll of road deaths. The carnage has made America’s streets and highways the most dangerous in the industrialized world.

As Leonhardt points out, federal data show that 100 people die daily in US vehicle wrecks. Many are young. They’re killed by drunken, distracted, and drugged drivers, or they die due to their own bad decisions, including poor maintenance of their vehicles, or because of bad luck.

July 2, 2018

High-deductible nightmares: the health insurance crisis partisans ignore

by Patrick A. Malone

While political partisans pound without pause for extreme changes in the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs that seek to assist the poor, sick, children, and others with access to health care, they’re ignoring the medical nightmare that’s afflicting ever-rising numbers of middle- and upper-class Americans who get their health coverage at work: high-deductible health insurance.

Families long have been staggering under sudden and sizable medical expenses they may be forced to bear because they need health insurance and only can afford their employers’ offerings by reducing their monthly premiums with high-deductible policies. They’re betting they won’t be hit with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs.

They’re losing that wager. Often. A lot. And dealing with dire consequences. As Bloomberg News Service reported:

February 28, 2018

When big money floods into health care, the results can be crazy and corrosive

by Patrick A. Malone

With Americans spending more than $3 trillion annually on health care, the corrosive and crazy effects of all that big money can become almost common place. Even still, hospitals, doctors, and Big Pharma still manage to come up with plenty of, Aw, really, c’mon kinds of financial situations.

Recent news reports, for example, have focused on such dubious dollars and cents concerns like: bedside loans, disparities (price gouging) in cancer care, and, of course, skimpy health insurance plans.

Caveat emptor? Not already infuriated by some recent visual depictions of the upside-down state of costs in the U.S. health care system (see figures*) Read on:

February 1, 2018

Yes, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure

by Patrick A. Malone

Preventive measures, even small ones, can be life changing and lifesaving. They can safeguard drivers and passengers in car wrecks, protect young folks during a bad flu season, and ensure that fewer Americans still take up one of the proven, major health harms — smoking.

Let’s start with a simple, often overlooked vehicular precaution: Buckle up that seat belt, please. As New York Times columnist David Leonhardt noted in a recent Opinion section roundup, the number of Americans killed on the roads who fail to wear vehicle restraints, notably seat belts, has hovered “between 48 percent and 51 percent in each of the past five years.”

Yes, that’s a correct figure: Roughly half of those killed didn’t use one of the most publicized, almost reflexive safety steps around.

January 15, 2018

The U.S. way? Rich reap good health, while poor toil in sickness

by Patrick A. Malone

Here’s something that many Americans likely would want to think twice about letting happen: Should good health and long lives be just another of the spoils reserved to the rich?

Vox, a news and information site, has posted a provocative dig into national data on longevity — a measure that has raised experts’ concern with its recent rare, two-years-in-a-row dive, notably due to fatal overdoses of opioid drugs, including prescription painkillers, heroin, and fentanyl.

Experts scrutinizing the data, Vox says, keep finding that “what’s often lost in the conversation about the uptick in [U.S.] mortality … is that this trend isn’t affecting all Americans. In fact, there’s one group … that’s doing better than ever: the rich. While poor and middle-class Americans are dying earlier these days, the wealthiest among us are enjoying unprecedented longevity.”

November 16, 2017

Let’s toast to common sense, moderation with drinking, cancer-risk studies

by Patrick A. Malone

When topics like booze and health flow together, common sense seems to disappear. So let’s give credit to the context-restoring efforts of Aaron Carroll— a pediatrics faculty member at Indiana University medical school, a health policy researcher, and a writer for the New York Times’ “Upshot” column—and healthnewsreview.org, a health information watch dog site.

Both addressed a “panic” in certain quarters generated by a new caution issued by the American Society of Clinical Oncologists. The respected organization of cancer medical specialists said that even light alcohol consumption can add to drinkers’ cancer risks.

As Carroll summarized the cancer experts warning:

October 10, 2017

40 percent of diagnosed cancers linked with patients’ excess weight

by Patrick A. Malone

Those carrying around a few pounds extra, or maybe even a lot more, may want to get moving and to drop that excess weight for yet more compelling health causes: That’s because more than 630,000 Americans were diagnosed in 2014 with cancers linked to obesity or overweight, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

The CDC says 40 percent of all diagnosed cancers were associated with obesity. At a time when the nation is seeing some success in reducing overall rates of diagnosed cancers, a baker’s dozen of overweight-related cancers increased 7 percent between 2005 and 2014. Two out of three of the cancers occurred in those 50- to 74-years-old.

Federal officials have found that more than half of Americans don’t know there’s a connection between 13 kinds of cancers (see diagram) and excess weight. It took public health officials decades to persuade the public that smoking posed cancer health risks and people needed to stop—and Big Tobacco still resorts to unceasing, deceptive tactics to undermine this awareness.

June 25, 2017

GOP senators’ Trumpcare: Meaner in many ways than even House plans

by Patrick A. Malone

After weeks of huddling in partisan secrecy, majority Republicans in the U.S. Senate have coughed up what they’ve dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act , aka their version of Trumpcare.

In brief, the GOP Senate bill would:

Slash Medicaid, faster and more than the House version, aka the American Health Care Act

June 22, 2017

Big Tobacco, preying on poor and uneducated, also hikes health inequities

by Patrick A. Malone

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Although most Americans finally may be breaking out of cigarette smoking’s killer grip, Big Tobacco keeps inflicting terrible harm on some of the nation’s most vulnerable—the poor, uneducated, and those who live in rural areas.

The federal Centers for Disease Control has just offered its annual assessment on Americans’ smoking habits, providing some rare good news about most of us and especially kids: Cigarette smoking among the nation’s youth is diving to new lows, and the use of smokeless or e-cigarettes for “vaping” showed its first declines.

Anti-smoking campaigns may be working, persuading teens and many adults to avoid smoking or to quit the bad habit that has been proven to cause cancers and to contribute to heart disease and other damaging conditions, the CDC says. The agency also notes that youth vaping and smoking may have declined due to new age-based restrictions on product sales and advertising.