Monday, January 28, 2008

Leprosy awareness

World Leprosy Day, yesterday, and the 17th International Leprosy Congress in Hyderabad, which starts on Wednesday, have again drawn attention to this medieval disease health club. Leprosy is now curable and all but four countries have achieved the elimination target set by the World Health Organisation, of under one case per 10,000 population. More than 250,000 new cases are still reported each year, but overall the numbers are in decline.

But for those affected and their relatives, the prejudice associated with leprosy is often worse than the disease itself. Millions are subjected to discrimination and social exclusion, limiting their opportunities for education, employment and marriage. "Leper" is still widely used as a derogatory term to describe an outcast from society health club. This discrimination is a denial of human rights. I therefore urge the international community to support the Global Appeal 2008,health club calling for an end to this discrimination and the ignorance and fear that help to promote it.

There goes our sense of perspective

The day before Black Monday (2008 version), the Sunday Telegraph was already preparing its readers for hard times ahead. They would, it advised, have to take their shoes to "the mender" (what happened to cobblers?), wash clothes in cold water, eat scrag-end of lamb, root vegetables and mackerel, and turn over old cuffs and collars. On the other hand, Independent on Sunday readers were told by the economics columnist Hamish McRae that he had been to Stockholm and found everybody cheerful.

It's hard for newspapers to know how they should respond to stock market crashes and threats of recession. Should they follow their usual instincts - as they do in stories about weather, disease or terrorists - and joyfully hype up the impending doom, thus (they hope) boosting sales? Or should they, mindful of how downturns damage advertising-dependent newspapers, to say nothing of their owners, play down the dangers? After all, during the last significant recession, one newspaper proprietor jumped off his yacht and drowned.

At the Financial Times, which stands to lose more than most from a recession, the mood as stock markets slumped and American banks turned to foreign governments for support was near to hysteria. Perhaps the FT wanted to echo the mood among its core readers in the City. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator, feared for "the political legitimacy of the market economy itself". health club John Plender was haunted by visions of the "deflationary nightmare that has confronted Japan since 1990". The financier George Soros, writing on the op-ed page, screamed that the crisis could be "more severe than any since the Second World War", while a contributor from the Yale School of Management trembled at the prospect of "a transformation" comparable to the switch from feudalism to capitalism.

At the Guardian, schadenfreude was in the ascendant. "It is state intervention that is keeping the market economy afloat," wrote Seumas Milne. Jonathan Freedland thought "current convulsions . . .health club suggest turbo-capitalism is not just unfair, it is dishonest and dangerous". In the Independent, Andreas Whittam Smith thought "the big question" was whether "market capitalism already exhibits the features that will lead to its replacement".

It is hard to believe Whittam Smith was writing about the same events as the Times's Anatole Kaletsky. On January 14, as the FTSE stood at just over 6200, Kaletsky assured readers the global credit crisis "is almost over" and "there will be no US recession". As for stock markets, they "will rise in 2008".

Was Kaletsky embarrassed 10 days later, with the FTSE well below 6000 and everybody expecting a US recession? He would admit only that "events have moved faster than I expected" and he slid craftily from predicting no US recession to predicting no world recession. Nor did McRae repent of his earlier optimism. He drew a distinction between what happens in stock markets and what happens in "the real economy". In the latter, he insisted, "everything points to a slowdown rather than a collapse".

It is, of course, grossly unfair to expect Wolf, Plender, Kaletsky, McRae or any other commentator to predict the course of events accurately. If they could do so, they wouldn't be Fleet Street hacks, but multi-billionaires, and we all know the jokes about six economists having 12 opinions. health club It may seem rash of Kaletsky to dismiss Soros - who actually is a multi-billionaire because of his success in judging markets correctly - as "unequivocally wrong". But it's second nature for speculators (even retired ones) to predict big price falls because that's when they buy (or bought) cheap assets. Besides, Kaletsky and McRae could still be proved right, particularly now it's been revealed the crash may have been provoked by a rogue trader in Paris.

As the former Economist editor Bill Emmott observed in the Guardian on Friday, "stock market traders are wild, emotional creatures" - like journalists, he might have added - "and we risk going mad if we try to understand their every move".

Where does that leave newspaper readers? Ownership of shares and other tradeable assets - either directly or indirectly through pension funds and so on - is far more widespread than it was, say, 30 years ago. Readers, at times like this, are desperate for good advice. But if they turn to economics and City commentators, they will be relying on people who are on the borderline of insanity, if you believe Emmott.

The truth is that the commentators are best read, not perhaps as you would read the astrologists, but certainly as you would read the sports reporters trying to predict whether Manchester Utd will beat Arsenal. Interesting - fun, health club even - but not to be taken very seriously. To adapt the old putdown of sports writers, most economics commentators are fans of capitalism with typewriters.

The redtops, on the whole, took a calmer approach to Black Monday than the upmarket papers. On Tuesday, the Mirror had only one low-key story on page 12. And on Wednesday, the Sun's leader announced: "Global markets are in turmoil. . . But don't worry - the Sun has come to the rescue with a host of gags on Page 29." They weren't very good gags, but the idea was right.

Sensitivity and suicide

Extensive coverage last week of the suspected "copycat" suicides of seven young people in Bridgend, south Wales - health club and the publication in one paper earlier this month of the picture of a young City banker as he leapt to his death from a hotel window - have reignited concerns about how suicide is reported.

The publication of photographs of people in the course of taking their own lives has been the subject of ongoing debate - and of complaints to the PCC. In January 2006 pictures of the death of the lawyer Katherine Ward, who jumped from a London hotel, were printed in the Sun health club, the London Evening Standard, and the Times, and prompted five complaints to the PCC. The complaints were rejected on the grounds that they did not specifically breach the PCC's code on taste and decency, and were not gratuitous, but they nevertheless prompted criticism from groups campaigning for more sensitive reporting of suicide.

The Bridgend coverage is likely to be monitored particularly carefully after recent changes to the PCC's editors' code of practice. In June 2006 the code was amended to include a new sub-clause tightening guidance on the reporting of suicide. It was seen as a victory for groups such as the Samaritans which had stepped up its campaigning for more sensitive coverage. The new sub-clause was added to clause five of the code which outlines guidance on intrusion into grief and shock. It states: "When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used." Introducing the change, the PCC code committee said it accepted evidence submitted by the Samaritans and other campaign groups that "media reporting of suicide often prompted copycat cases", and that editors should take this into account.

According to Kate Redway, PR manager for the Samaritans, the fact that a complaint lodged after the new guidance was incorporated was upheld by the PCC in October 2007, signals "a sincere desire" to encourage more sensitive reporting.

The PCC ruled that the Wigan Evening Post's coverage of the death of a teacher who had electrocuted himself contained "too much detail in describing how the suicide happened" and that "by going in to such detail there was a danger that sufficient information was included to spell out to others how to carry out such a suicide".

The reporting of the Bridgend deaths, while not appearing to divulge intimate details of each one, is nevertheless ringing some alarm bells about how much and what kind of detail is acceptable. health club A spokesman for the mental health charity Mind says: "It is easy to see a distinction between coverage which has focused on salacious detail or [speculative] theories about social networking sites, and coverage that has put the town into context and explored the social factors which contribute to suicide. Sensational reporting distorts people's understanding of suicide and mental ill health in general."

According to Redway, the story demonstrates why reporters and editors need to remain vigilant. "I don't think it's helpful to speculate about a suicide pact when there is no concrete evidence."

The government's mental health tsar Louis Appleby says: "Evidence shows that media reporting of suicides can trigger copycat suicides. health club It's why the PCC amended its code to discourage the reporting of excessive detail of suicide methods. Events in Bridgend highlight the need to tread very carefully when reporting events like these. Especially given that young people are the most vulnerable and the risk is greater when they have a feeling of identification, whether with celebrities or other young people."

He adds: "Simply reporting on suicides can lead other people, who are already feeling suicidal, to take their own lives. How you choose to report it can potentially save lives. Suicide is complex, so it is generally misleading to suggest a simplistic cause and effect explanation - and including details of helplines like the Samaritans could save someone's life."

A new report, Sensitive Coverage Saves Lives, published by the MediaWise Trust, concludes that while progress has been made health club, many journalists and editors remain unaware of either general or in-house reporting guidelines. Next month the government's anti-stigma mental health body, Shift, will publish its own guidance on the reporting of suicide, a handbook that will be distributed to editors.

'It's like bombing the Louvre'

Marie Smith Jones was the world's last Eyak speaker - by the time she died last week, she could use her mother tongue only in her dreams. But the loss of a language is not just a personal tragedy, says Mark Abley, health club it is a cultural disaster.

Some deaths come as a shock. The death last Monday of Marie Smith Jones did not. She was 89, blind, a heavy smoker and a recovering alcoholic, who had borne nine children and buried two of them. People had been expecting her death for years.

By "people", I mean linguists. Most residents of Anchorage, the Alaskan city where she spent her final decades, had never heard of her. Even after she addressed a UN conference on indigenous rights, she managed to maintain her privacy. Yet among the advocates for minority languages, Jones was famous. A few of them knew her by a different name: Udach' Kuqax'a'a'ch', a name that belonged to the Eyak language and means "a sound that calls people from far away".

Article continues
Jones is thought to have been the last full-blooded member of the Eyak, a saltwater people of southern Alaska. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, it spilled 240,000 barrels of crude oil into their traditional fishing grounds. More important, Jones was the last person to speak Eyak fluently. She had held that melancholy distinction since her sister's death in the early 90s. Her passing means that nobody in the world can effortlessly distinguish a demex'ch (a soft, rotten spot in the ice) from a demex'ch'lda'luw (a large, treacherous hole in the ice). It means that siniik'adach'uuch' - the vertical groove between the nose and upper lip, literally a "nose crumple" - has fled the minds of the living.

Are such arcane details significant? Jones thought so health club. Asked by Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker how she felt about her language dying with her, she replied: "How would you feel if your baby died? If someone asked you, 'What was it like to see it lying in the cradle?'" Jones added that she hated reporters. A fisherman's daughter, who had worked in a cannery from the age of 12, she could not then have imagined how many journalists she would meet in old age.

The Eyak language has no offspring - no close relatives of any kind. Kolbert wittily described it as "the spinster aunt of the Athabascan language group". Linguistic evidence suggests the Eyak people split off to become a separate culture roughly 3,000 years ago, travelling downriver to a salmon-busy coast. In verbal terms, Eyak's nephews and nieces include the Apaches of the dry south-west, familiar to us from westerns.

The Eyak may never have had a large population, and in recent centuries they suffered badly from the ravages of smallpox, measles, influenza and colonisation. A larger Indian group, the Tlingit, began to encroach on their territory. Today, powerless and divided, the Eyak scarcely survive as a cohesive people.

Yet even after Jones's death, their language will enjoy an academic half-life. Unlike hundreds of other tribal tongues in the world which fell silent before the linguists arrived, Eyak is richly documented. Video and audio recordings, transcriptions of ancient stories, a hand-typed dictionary that runs to well over 3,000 pages: all this now exists in DVD format. Future scholars who set out to explore Eyak's grammar, or its exact relationship to other languages, will have plenty of material to draw on.

The dictionary's compiler, Michael Krauss, founded the Alaska Native Languages Center in 1972 to record, preserve and (if possible) strengthen the 20 indigenous languages in the state. He is an informed and eloquent spokesman for minority tongues. But despite his work, most Alaskan languages are in feeble health.

They were weakened by terrifying epidemics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by the economic and social destruction of their communities, and by the unsparing malice of an education system that promoted the silencing of all indigenous tongues. Can they now survive a force that Krauss has described as "cultural nerve gas"? To minority languages, he famously predicted, the mass media will prove "insidious, painless and fatal".

As in Alaska, so it is in much of the world. The statistics have become routine; their shock value has faded. Even so, it may be worth repeating that if a child who is born today survives the century, three-quarters of all human languages are likely to vanish during his or her lifetime.

Thanks to Jones's feisty presence, Eyak became something of a poster child for the cause of language preservation. The notion of a "last speaker" carries a powerful mystique. But perhaps Eyak was an unwise choice. Now the poster is out of date, what happens to the cause?

Linguists and cultural activists were not the only ones to seize on the solitary example of Jones. health club In a famous essay published a few years ago in Prospect, Kenan Malik did the same. He used her to illustrate a trend he saw as both inevitable and desirable: the concentration of human intelligence among fewer and fewer languages. "The reason that Eyak will soon be extinct," Malik wrote, "is not because Marie Smith Jones has been denied her rights, but because no one else wants to, or is capable of, speaking the language. This might be tragic for Marie Smith Jones - and frustrating for professional linguists - but it is not a question of rights. Neither a culture, nor a way of life, nor yet a language, has a God-given 'right to exist'."

Fair enough. But Eyak's death comes as a result less of personal choice than of longstanding government policy. For most of a century, indigenous children in Alaska suffered physical punishment if they were caught speaking their mother tongue in the classroom or the playground. In Wales and Ireland, Canada and South Africa, the same held true. There are many countries, including China and Russia, where language loss should still be a human-rights issue.

Official policy in Alaska centred on "reclaiming the natives from improvident habits," on convincing them to "abandon their old customs," and on "transforming them into ambitious and self-helpful citizens" health club. Small wonder that after several generations of reclaiming and transforming, the remaining handful of Eyak were unable to speak their ancestral tongue.

Jones married a white man, and did not pass on her language to her children - a decision she came to regret. But she made it to spare them the pain she had endured. As a girl, she had learned to see bilingualism not as an asset but an impediment. Eyak, she had been told, was a useless language.

Or perhaps her teachers didn't deign to call it a language. In 1887, a federal commissioner for Indian affairs had made the prevailing wisdom clear: "Teaching an Indian youth in his own barbarous dialect is a positive detriment to him." The word "barbarous" betrays obvious contempt; the use of "dialect" is more subtle and insidious. But any language can seem barbarous to its speakers' enemies, and no language is primitive.

So the cause of language preservation carries on, as it must. In Krauss's words, "Every language is a treasury of human experience." His fellow linguist Ken Hale put it more bluntly: "Languages embody the intellectual wealth of the people that speak them. Losing any one of them is like dropping a bomb on the Louvre."

How best to avoid that fate? For a minority language to flourish, its speakers need a sort of bullheaded confidence. Such stubborn self-belief emerges from a sense of cultural power and feeds back into it. The classic example is the astonishing rebirth of Hebrew a century ago in what would become Israel. In our own time the Basques and the Catalans, the Welsh and the Maoris display a similar faith.

These are the groups who should now act as poster children for minority languages: the Maori boys and girls in pre-school "language nests", the artists and producers who mutate the mass media in Welsh, the Catalan activists who have peacefully forced Spain to rethink its identity. The vigour in these cultures, and many others, belies the easy notion that all minority languages are doomed.

It was sadly different for Jones. During the last 15 years of her life, she could use her mother tongue only with a visiting linguist or in her dreams. She had, as Krauss said this week, "a tragic mantle" to bear, and she did so "with great dignity, grace and spirit". Perhaps last week she was called from far away under her Eyak name.

want full story on my children's murder, says fathe

It is a year since Jimi Ogunkoya's two children were murdered by their mother, and five years since a report into the death of Victoria Climbié which was supposed to put an end to similar tragedies.

Yet Ogunkoya claims that child welfare authorities failed his children while they were alive, and are continuing to do so by covering up the circumstances of their deaths.

Antoine, aged 10, and Kenniece, three, were killed by their mother, Ogunkoya's former partner Viviane Gamor, 30, who was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. Despite her mental health problems and history of violence, Hackney social services sanctioned her unsupervised visits to the children, against Ogunkoya's wishes.

Article continues The Hackney Safeguarding Children Board is due to publish an executive summary of a report into the deaths shortly, but Ogunkoya, 33, and his parents, Clement Akin and Florence Omoyela Ogunkoya, all of whom were the children's main carers, have been told they may be denied access to the full report. Their solicitors are considering seeking a judicial review if the report is not released to the family.

"There are so many cases where children have been failed by agencies not doing their jobs properly," Ogunkoya said. "My children's death is not the first in these circumstances and sadly it won't be the last."

Hackney council said a decision had not yet been made about whether the full report would be released to the family.

Ogunkoya's concerns are echoed by Lord Laming, who led the inquiry into the death of eight-year-old Climbié in 2000, and made 108 recommendations to improve child protection in a report in January 2003.

The government introduced a policy document, Every Child Matters, and implemented the Children Act 2004. One of the recommendations was that agencies should do more to share information about children at risk. Laming expressed his frustration with the response. "I despair about the organisations that have not put in place recommendations that I judged to be little more than good, basic practice," he said last week.

Mor Dioum, director of the Victoria Climbié Foundation, which campaigns for improvements in child protection, said: "I'm aware of at least five cases since the death of Victoria Climbié where the circumstances mirror Victoria's in that the children were not hidden away and social services were involved. Two of them were in London boroughs involved in the Climbié case. We need urgent reviews of Lord Laming's reforms because we are losing the vision of Every Child Matters. In recent cases where children have died or been seriously injured, the focus tended to be on the adults."

Dioum is calling for an independent public inquiry into the deaths.Ogunkoya says that if vital information had been communicated to him about the state of Gamor's mental health he would never have allowed the children to stay overnight with her.

Instead, he was not told that she had a diagnosis of schizophrenia norwhy she had been sectioned from September to October 2006. He discovered only at her Old Bailey trial for killing her children in July 2007 she had been sectioned after she threatened her half-sister with a knife.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine something like this would happen, because Viviane had never shown me that she could be violent," said Ogunkoya. "Social workers took the children out of a safe environment and put them in an unsafe one. They didn't take our views and the protection of the children seriously."

Gamor was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act following the trial.

Ogunkoya and his partner, Martha Atito, 28, who helped look after the children, believe he was stereotyped as a young black man who was not likely to be a good father.

"I've lost both my children, I cry constantly and don't know how I'm going to come back from this. If the authorities who were supposed to protect Antoine and Kenniece cover up what went wrong it will just rub salt into my wounds.

"They didn't tell us what was going on when my kids were alive and they're still not telling us. It's one thing if agencies do wrong and put their hands up to it, but it's another to cover things up because they can."

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

7 Steps To Your Best Possible Healthcare Sample

Bethlehem, PA, December 18, 2007 -- DJ Iber Publishing announced today that starting immediately readers can download a free sample chapter of Dr. Ruthann Russo's new book entitled 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare.

Beauty Health In this downloadable sample chapter Dr. Russo discusses how one of the keys to good healthcare is planning ahead and building a healthcare team. Your two most important team members are your primary care physician (PCP) and your medical mentor. You will find out how to select a PCP, determine the role your PCP should play, and how to maintain an effective relationship. You will also find out what a medical mentor is and how they can help you with acute or long term health challenges. You will also find out how to be a medical mentor yourself. By combining common sense explanations and tips for building your healthcare team along with real life patient stories, this sample chapter provides a strong base for anyone interested in personal health planning.

"From establishing personal health priorities to finding the most qualified physicians at the best hospitals, Russo leads consumers on a step-by-step path to getting top quality health care. Through engaging prose and telling anecdotes, Russo has written a practical guide to help every member of the family."

Dr. Russo's new book, 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare, is a guide book for the healthcare consumer that enables everyone to navigate the healthcare system. By combining her expertise from over 20 years advising healthcare providers with her family's own experiences, Dr. Russo provides valuable tools for common sense techniques to getting the most from the healthcare system Beauty Health. Topics covered include how to find the best hospitals and doctors, how to understand and communicate with physicians, how to obtain and manage your health information, and the importance of defining your own personal healthcare values, vision and mission statement.

7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare is available for purchase online at www.DJIberStore.com. The advanced softbound copy is priced at $24.95 and the downloadable eBook version is priced at $19.95.

About Dr. Ruthann Russo: Ruthann Russo is an expert with more than 20 years of experience working in and advising healthcare organizations. She designed the HealthMap? program for healthcare consumers. She has instructed more than 3,000 physicians to improve their documentation in patient medical records. She is the author of five healthcare industry books. She is a graduate of Dickinson College, American University's Washington College of Law, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School's program in public health, and Touro University. She is a partner in the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based law firm of Russo and Russo and a Managing Director with Navigant Consulting.

About DJ Iber Publishing Inc. DJ Iber Publishing is dedicated to helping people understand the healthcare system and have more satisfying healthcare experiences. We believe that more informed consumers result in more accountable healthcare providers, which will, ultimately, Beauty Health result in a better healthcare system. We are also dedicated to providing resources to help people improve their overall personal development. More empowered individuals make for more responsible organizations, which creates a better world for us.

Researchers Study The Potential Health Benefits Of Ginger

With the increase in the popularity of alternative and natural health solutions, many of the time-honored medical traditions of the east, such as the use of ginger root, are exciting the interest of clinical researchers. Ginger has a long history of medicinal use, particularly in traditional Chinese medicine and the Ayurvedic healing traditions of India. In recent years, a great deal of clinical research has been done on the potential health benefits of ginger.

Used for thousands of years to ease digestive complaints and nausea, among numerous other ailments, ginger has attracted the attention of numerous researchers throughout the world - including those seeking a means of easing the side effects of some cancer and Hepatitis C treatments. The University of Michigan Cancer Center participated in a recent study, along with the National Institute for Cancer and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This particular study, formally titled as a “Phase II Trial Of Encapsulized Ginger As A Treatment For Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting,” was a placebo control, double blind, and randomized.

Preliminary studies, according to the Maryland Medical Center, indicate that ginger may also benefit health by helping to lower cholesterol and serving to help prevent clotting of the blood. Studies have also indicated that, in a lab setting, “components in ginger may have anti-cancer activity.” These early study results do look promising, but further clinical research is needed to determine how ginger can be useful in helping to treat heart disease and certain types of cancer.

The American Cancer Society, while acknowledging the potential health benefits of ginger, advises those that are using blood thinning agents to be sure to consult with their health care provider before using ginger medicinally. That is because some clinical studies indicate that ginger can potentially act as a blood thinning agent. This could prolong bleeding by reducing blood clotting abilities when combined with standard blood thinning or clot prevention medicines. It is because of this that some health care professionals advise pregnant women, especially those with indications of placental or other types of bleeding, to avoid using ginger during their pregnancies.

Further clinical trials and other research will study the potentials that ginger has to benefit health. As with any supplement or alternative medicine option, it is always best to seek the advice of a health care professional, especially when taking other medications or undergoing treatment for serious health conditions.

Healthcare System: ItS Worse Than Being Sick

Healthcare System: It’s Worse Than Being Sick! PDF Print E-mail
In a live radio interview on Friday, December 7 with WOWO 1190 AM host Charly Butcher, healthcare expert Ruthann Russo, PhD, JD, MPH, RHIT explained that the most important thing you can do to make sure you are getting the best possible healthcare is to create your plan before you are sick.

Bethlehem, PA (Press Release) December 10, 2007— 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare author offers solution to simplifying the complex healthcare system.

“If you have been ill and in hospitals or someone you know has….you know how complex (the healthcare system is). It is worse than being sick!” Charly Butcher, morning host on WOWO, 1190 am, Ft. Wayne, Indiana

In a live radio interview on Friday, December 7 with WOWO 1190 AM host Charly Butcher, healthcare expert Ruthann Russo, PhD, JD, MPH, RHIT explained that the most important thing you can do to make sure you are getting the best possible healthcare is to create your plan before you are sick. Dr. Russo, author of the 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare, suggested that planning is the key to success in healthcare. “If you are having a small party, you probably spend more time planning the party than most folks spend on planning and researching their healthcare options.” Dr. Russo’s book, 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare, offers a system for creating and implementing a customized plan. Topics in the book range from defining a personal healthcare mission to finding and communicating with the best hospitals and doctors. Dr. Russo teaches us how to be empowered, informed and prepared healthcare consumers.

For more information regarding Dr. Russo’s new book or to purchase a copy of 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare please visit www.7StepsHealth.com.

For more information regarding Charly Butcher or WOWO 1190 AM please visit www.wowo.com.

About Dr. Ruthann Russo:
Ruthann Russo is an expert with more than 20 years of experience working in and advising healthcare organizations. She designed the HealthMap™ program for healthcare consumers. Healthmap is available for download at www.healthmapforms.com. She has instructed more than 3,000 physicians on how to improve their documentation in patient medical records. She is the author of five healthcare industry books. She is a graduate of Dickinson College, American University’s Washington College of Law, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s program in public health, and Touro University. She is a partner in the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based law firm of Russo and Russo and a Managing Director with Navigant Consulting.

Beauty Health And Beauty Sales Drive Growth At Alliance Boots

Alliance Boots, which was acquired by private equity group KKR last year, has announced like-for-like retail sales up by 4.8% over the last three months of 2007. Growth was driven by strong demand for health and beauty division, which reported underlying sales growth of 6.9%. Last Christmas the group reported like-for-like sales growth of just 1.5%.

The group’s pharmacy operation also performed well, with dispensing volumes up by 5.2%. In the wholesaling drugs division, sales in France (the group’s biggest wholesale market) rose by 3.5%.The figures are the first under new boss Alex Gourlay, who was promoted from healthcare director when Richard Baker resigned after the takeover.

Local Woman Recipient Of Beauty Health

Meet Lori Roper, a 36-year-old nurse and single mother of three.

In many ways, Roper represents the everyday American woman, juggling the responsibilities of a full-time career with the never-ending demands of a busy family life. Roper, like so many others, spends much of her time doing for others and rarely doing anything for herself.

But there’s something different about Lori lately. The new year has brought her an opportunity to gain a new lease on life. Roper has been chosen to be the recipient of a new community project: “The Bartlesville Health & Beauty Makeover.”

The effort was initiated by local dentist Dr. Ron Hart who recruited a group of Bartlesville Health & Beauty professionals to donate their expertise to the project in the areas of fitness, nutrition, skin care, hair design and fashion. Together they comprise the “Bartlesville Health & Beauty Team.”

According to Hart, Roper was a great choice to help the group launch their inaugural makeover project.

“To showcase the talents that we have in Bartlesville, we thought it would be exciting to provide a makeover for a local individual,” Hart says. “It didn’t take long to find a deserving person. We selected Lori because of her potential and because she had unselfishly put others before herself.”

Beauty Health And Beauty Non Allergy Milk

ASK Shirley Buckley what her favourite animal is and she'll likely pick a goat over the more popular cat or dog. That's because as far as the 60-year-old is concerned the goat has helped dramatically improve her standard of life Beauty Health. Now, as a thank you, Shirley of Greetland, Halifax, is singing the goat's praises in a national publicity campaign to coincide with Food Intolerance Week which starts today and runs until Friday.

Food intolerance and food allergies are a growing concern in the UK with an estimated 20 to 30 per cent of UK adults and children now claiming to suffer from food sensitivity. The most common childhood food allergy Beauty Health, according to the experts, is an intolerance to cows milk, which contributes to conditions such as eczema and asthma.
Shirley who lives with husband Paul and has three children and four grandchildren, suffers from osteoarthritis and last year her daughter bought her a health book which recommended she remove diary products and other foods from her diet.She originally tried soya milk but couldn't stomach it so she switched to goats milk and contacted the UK's leader supplier of goats milk products, St Helen's Farm for a recipe book.

When the company discovered how goats milk had helped make a big difference to her health, they asked her to take part in a campaign called `Thank Goodness For Goats'. In addition to fronting the campaign, Shirley's story is feature on its website Beauty Health. According to St Helen's Farm 70-per-cent of adults and children who have opted for goats milk instead of traditional diary products, to combat health problems, have noticed an improvement to conditions such as eczema, asthma, arthritis, digestion problems and catarrh.

Shirley, who has osteoarthritis in her hips and spine says: "Cutting out diary products and using goats milk has made a huge difference. I can get around a lot easier and have less pain. I now use lots of products from the range and incorporate them into my favourite recipes Beauty Health."

Do sperm have health benefits

MEN, often in an attempt at being cunning, boast about how precious their ejaculate is, some even going to lengths to preach the health benefits of it.

Beauty Health And while it's universally agreed that without the 'precious' ejaculate procreation as we know it would end, more and more, women have taken these other messages as fact, advocating its use for everything from facials - it has been said to be effective in tightening the pores - to boosting the metabolism.

While many women use smarts to determine that this is just male tactics used to get them into bed, the issue has sparked enough debate to warrant answers from a gynaecologist. This week we put the questions to gynaecologist Dr Horace Fletcher.
Is semen a natural source of proteins, vitamins, minerals or the like?

Does semen help at all in any beauty regimen. "Semen is good for one thing and one thing only and that is to impregnate the woman. Beauty Health I will agree that the semen is made up of a lot of proteins but that is to nourish the sperm itself," Dr Fletcher said. "A woman would have to drink a glassful to get the protein from it. Where would she get that? A man's ejaculate amounts to about one teaspoon unless he had been deprived of sex for a long time."

That said,Beauty Health Dr Fletcher also quashed the idea that semen can remove acne and give clear healthy skin if used in facials. "Men probably say this because they want to dominate the woman but those things are not true," the doctor said

Omen's Health, Fitness And Wellness Online

"More and more women over 40 are online searching for health, fitness and wellness information and products. The launch of our e-commerce site is aimed at satisfying this growing need for both reliable information and quality goods," said company President, Sandra L. Huard.

The company's range of 6,400 high-quality name-brand products appeals to a wide female audience, including health, beauty and fitness-conscious consumers; consumers of natural, organic, and herbal health and beauty products; as well as bodybuilders and fitness models.

According to Sandra, "it has never been more important for women to put health, fitness and wellness at the top of their agendas Beauty Health. With rising obesity rates and cases of Type II diabetes, particularly in children, the need to act now is a key to reversing these trends."

A growing body of research indicates that women over 40 are actively searching and purchasing products online. As a whole, this group of consumers is health-conscious, self-aware and has a similar set of core beliefs about health and wellness. Women over 40 want to live a healthy and long life without any significant health issues preventing them from fulfilling this goal.

"Health, fitness, wellness and family are my passions," said Sandra, "which is why our company's mission is to serve the health and fitness needs of women and their families, helping them achieve the lives they deserve. I want to make a valuable contribution to the lives of other women over 40 and I know that my message of 'Healthy. Fit. Living Fully.' will appeal to a wide audience."

Although Women's Health Supply International targets primarily women over 40, there is a large selection of products for families, including vitamins and supplements designed specifically for the unique needs of men, children, pets and women of all ages.

Sandra L. Huard is author of the "Women's Health, Fitness and Wellness Blog," which can be found at Beauty Health. She is actively working to create an online community of other women who want to share their goals, thoughts, comments and questions about women's health, fitness and wellness issues.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Raising the red standard health club

At the beginning of The Whisperers, his recent book about Stalin's Russia, Orlando Figes claims that through schools and youth organisations the Bolsheviks "aimed to indoctrinate the next generation in the new collective way of life".health club In her book about children in Russia, Catriona Kelly introduces her chapters on Soviet education with the words: "In the earliest days, the mood was one of iconoclastic euphoria combined with democratic utopianism. Children had been regimented and dragooned; now they were to be free to learn for the joy of it. Pupil organisations had been banned; now every school was to have its pupil organisation."

The contrast is startling, and though it is possible to recognise their awful compatibility, these claims characterise the books' divergences. Kelly begins her story earlier than Figes, in 1890, so that the extraordinary convulsions from 1917 onwards, as they affected children, are seen in terms of the preceding years, health club when a majority of Russia's population was still illiterate and unschooled.

The Bolsheviks inherited an inadequate education system along with new ideas from abroad about child development (Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, devisers of the Binet-Simon intelligence scale, were first published in Russian in 1909, and Freud from 1910), while Tolstoy's writings about education were widely read. Some of the progressive ideas - which included no beating, "rational education" and the exclusion of religion and all forms of superstition from the curriculum - came to be thought of later as contaminated by their bourgeois origins, but they were enthusiastically incorporated into the earliest attempts to create a system of public nurseries, kindergartens and primary and secondary schooling for all children.

Kelly's account of the development of childbirth services over the same period takes a similar course: from its "very low base" in 1917 to some successful local attempts to modernise care for mothers and babies. Once again the new edifice toppled on its frail and chaotic foundations, to collapse beneath the weight of poverty and starvation in the 20s. Women were often worse off than they had been, because modernisation had severed the old reliance on amateur midwives and friends and relations. Even in the 50s, women were often expected to work until their waters broke, when they might give birth on the factory floor or in a ditch, unattended by anyone. Femininity was suspect, and girls were encouraged to be more like boys.

If Kelly is good on historical context and change, and fair to the infinite variety of what went on, from the appalling to the heroic and imaginative, her focus on children entails the exclusion of wider questions of undoubted relevance to them: employment and income,health club or the impact of shared housing on children's friendships and family relations. There is little sense of the pressures on parents - economic, political, sexual and social - which cannot have failed to affect their families. The consequences for health and life expectancy of adult alcoholism get little attention here, yet this, more than anything, must have produced the astronomical numbers of abandoned children and, indeed, child alcoholism.

Kelly concentrates on public policy and pronouncements, on provision for orphans and abandoned children, who roamed the streets during the whole of the 20th century (there are, apparently, a million of them now), and finally on educational and cultural provision. She is good on the contradictions visible in all this and on the sudden abandonment in the 30s of talk about children's rights or the importance of self-expression and creativity.

There are fascinating glimpses of that same trajectory in Kelly's discussion of recommended reading for the young, and a good deal about exceptional children, whether "prodigies" or delinquents or orphans, who seem to contribute to a Russian tradition that is simultaneously sentimental and cynical: always a touchstone for communism's successes and hidden failures. A report published in 1989, claiming that a third of kindergartens occupied defective buildings, was met with shock and disbelief by, as Kelly puts it, "a society used to believing that children were always given the best possible treatment".

Work done by the Soviet psychologists Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria in the 30s has had an important influence on research in the west into the dynamism of children's intellectual and linguistic development. Very little of that saw the light of day in the Soviet Union until the 60s and even then it made arguably less impact than it did in the west. There is disappointingly little here about how that work came to be done and how and why it was eventually revisited. Kornei Chukovsky and Anton Makarenko, their admired contemporaries, get more attention, though there is no analysis of their interestingly equivocal relation to official policy.

In the end, Kelly reaches the point where Figes began: "The causes behind the collapse of the Soviet system lay not just in failure to deliver, materially speaking. They also, it is clear, stemmed from the very relentlessness of political indoctrination - which in time generated indifference to dogma among many, and a critical attitude among a minority."

Her level-headed tackling of her subject serves to remind us that an account of public provision for children in Britain from 1890 onwards would not be a tale of unalloyed triumph, and that there were impressive achievements in the Soviet Union: the move from very low literacy levels to a respectable position among the developed countries of the world, an expanded education system and access for most children to sports and the arts. Kelly ends her story in 1991, so that she can only hint at the undermining of state provision during the last 20 years and the haphazard introduction of the market into education and other vital areas of young people's lives.

Clean and tidy

When Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 London was already the largest metropolis in the world with a population of nearly 2 million, but most of her subjects were still country-dwellers. By the end of the century London had grown sixfold, and 80% of Britons lived in towns or cities.

In large part the story of 19th-century England is the story of the city. Early Victorian cities struggled to manage themselves with a public infrastructure that had changed little since Elizabethan times. There was no regular income tax. The government's role in matters of sanitation, water supply or public health was barely recognised. While 15% of all children could expect to die before their first birthday, urban children were far worse off than their country cousins. Figures published in the Lancet in 1843 showed that the life expectancy of a labourer in rural Rutland was 38, while in Liverpool it was just 15.

The Great Filth is the latest of a recent spate of books that take dirt and disease as a starting point for the social history of the Victorian city. In particular, John Snow's revolutionary discovery in 1854 that cholera was spread not by air but by contaminated water has served as a foundation for several studies, most notably in Steven Johnson's excellent The Ghost Map

The Great Filth examines much of the same territory but views it through a wide-angle lens. Early in the book Stephen Halliday quotes the Health of Towns Association, established in 1844, whose founding principle was "to substitute health for disease, cleanliness for filth, order for disorder . . . and to bring to the poorest and meanest air, water and light". The association was short-lived but the "unsung heroes" who took up the cause ensured that, by 1901, cities were safer and healthier places in which to live. Scientists, doctors, midwives and engineers each merit a chapter.

While London inevitably dominates, the reach of Halliday's investigations extends to even more rapidly growing cities - Manchester, Glasgow and, in particular, Liverpool. His cast is consequently a large one, involving a wealth of engaging detail: the word "midwife", for example, was considered so vulgar that Louisa Hubbard, who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of women to education and employment, observed: "My dear, I wish there was another word for you; it would be so awkward if we used it just when the footman came in to put on coals." The book covers everything from Sir John Sutherland's claim that a crew of German seamen had contracted cholera from over-indulgence in plums, to the aside that the son of William Budd, the doctor who demonstrated that typhoid was carried by polluted water, was probably the model for Sherlock Holmes's Dr Watson.

This biographical approach, however, is also the book's critical flaw. By tackling the period as a series of separate, interconnecting stories Halliday gives himself fundamental structural difficulties. This is particularly problematic with regard to epidemics such as cholera, which preoccupied scientists, doctors and public servants alike. Often he is required to repeat himself or to refer the reader to points made elsewhere in the book.

Doctor Doctor health club

s there a difference between women and men in the way they experience heart attacks? I'm told that's why they aren't so easily recognised in women.

Basically, yes. When women start to have heart trouble, they experience a different pattern of symptoms from men. When more than 500 women who had just had heart attacks were asked how they felt before the attack, 95% said that for more than a month beforehand they had been unusually tired, had difficulty sleeping, were breathless, had indigestion and were more than usually anxious. Although most men report chest pain before a heart attack, fewer than a third of the women (30%) did so health club. So if you are a woman in your 40s or older and have recently started to have these symptoms, have a check-up.

Is there a difference between women and men in the way they experience heart attacks? I'm told that's why they aren't so easily recognised in women.

Basically, yes. When women start to have heart trouble, they experience a different pattern of symptoms from men health club. When more than 500 women who had just had heart attacks were asked how they felt before the attack, 95% said that for more than a month beforehand they had been unusually tired, had difficulty sleeping, were breathless, had indigestion and were more than usually anxious. Although most men report chest pain before a heart attack, fewer than a third of the women (30%) did so. So if you are a woman in your 40s or older and have recently started to have these symptoms, have a check-up.

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I often lose concentration, forget things and make mistakes. It's not an age thing - I've been like this since my teens, health club and am now in my 40s. Am I at risk of Alzheimer's disease later?

There are plenty of people like you, and you are probably not in the early throes of some terrible disease. A Bristol study in 2003 of 4,673 people in their workplace found that around one person in eight was often forgetful, found it hard to concentrate on their work and made repeated mistakes. It also found that there were more accidents among smokers, a statistic that was put down to smokers being more likely to take risks. That, however, was surmise. It will be interesting to see if those rates have fallen now that smoking is not allowed at work.

Around Britain with a fork

I went to a Chinese wedding in Shanghai," health club said Henrietta Lovell of the Rare Tea Company, "and they served an oolong tea that was greeted with applause by all the guests. The wedding speeches didn't have much to say about the bride or groom, but there was a good deal of comment on the quality of the tea."

I like that kind of insistence on the decencies of life. I've always had a thing about tea. It's more of a warm, cosy relationship than a torrid passion, but it has its moments. To be honest, I wasn't a China tea man - they were too refined and challenging for my clodhopping tastebuds. That was until I met Henrietta Lovell, aka the Stickler, for reasons that will become clear.

I went to a Chinese wedding in Shanghai," said Henrietta Lovell of the Rare Tea Company, "and they served an oolong tea that was greeted with applause by all the guests. The wedding speeches didn't have much to say about the bride or groom, but there was a good deal of comment on the quality of the tea."

I like that kind of insistence on the decencies of life. I've always had a thing about tea. It's more of a warm, cosy relationship than a torrid passion, but it has its moments. To be honest, I wasn't a China tea man - they were too refined and challenging for my clodhopping tastebuds. That was until I met Henrietta Lovell, aka the Stickler, for reasons that will become clear.

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I first met her at the BBC Good Food Show in London, dragged along to her stand by Mark Hix, late of the Ivy, Le Caprice, Scott's etc, and a bold champion of sound British produce and producers. And before I knew it, Lovell had poured me a cup of Silver Tip tea all the way from the "high mountain tea gardens of Fujian province" in China, and was batting me about the ears with the health-giving qualities of white teas, health club how green tea should be made only with whole leaves, and something about the fermentation of oolong, which, frankly, I rather missed because I was carried away on a delicate, shimmering, perfumed cloud of tea.

Eventually crashing back to earth, I got something of her life story - the tea part, anyway. Lovell used to be a project manager for a printing company, and looked after its interests in the far east. "Very dull," she said, but it took her to some interesting places, China being one, and there she came across China tea and its teashops.

"These were wonderful places, like old-fashioned wine merchants, where the Chinese would spend hours discussing and tasting teas, and spend incredible sums of money on them. Did you know that the Chinese spend a higher percentage of their disposable incomes on tea than we do on alcohol?"

Anyway, Lovell came back looking for teas of the quality she'd come across in China, and couldn't find them. "There were beautifully labelled, very expensive teas, but they didn't match up to what I'd tasted out there." So she took herself back to China to learn about the craft,health club and set about sourcing and importing tiptop teas.

There's rather more about tea in China than there is space to go into here, so let's stick with Silver Tip, also known as Silver Needle, because it is the simplest and most exquisite. And most expensive, naturally (although it still works out at only about 27p for a small pot).

True, finest white tea Silver Tip must be made with the spring buds of what Lovell calls the "big white variety" of the tea bush, Camellia sinensis. It's what's known as first flush - that is, the first new growth of the picking season, which begins in April. The buds - there are no leaves in Silver Tip - must be picked very early in the morning, before the sun's rays have had time to fall, by the most experienced pickers. The day has to be clear, too health club, because the buds then spend a day drying gently in the fresh air, being turned very carefully from time to time. On no account must the drying tip be broken, or they will be useless. Finally, they are vacuum-packed in very small quantities.

Of course, Lovell doesn't deal only in Silver Tip. The Rare Tea Company lists white, green, black and oolong teas of similar pedigree. She is very proud of her jasmine-scented white tea, and even lists a few teas from Darjeeling as well. But it's that image of Lovell battling her way to the "high mountain tea gardens of Fujian province" and haggling with the gnarled Chinese tea masters that appeals to my romantic imagination. And I'm sure it adds a lustre to every cup.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Education Health sectors

Eying a "strategic partnership" with Oman, India has mooted closer ties between private sectors of the two countries and offered to share with it expertise in key areas such as IT, health and science and technology.

"Oman has been witnessing all-round development and similarly, the Indian economy is also growing at 9 per cent. In order to sustain this growth rate, both countries require investments," External Affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, said here after inaugurating the new chancery-cum-residence complex of Indian embassy jointly with his Omani counterpart, Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah.

Mukherjee pointed that there were opportunities in abundance in both the economies which can be utilised to mutual advantage.

"We, on our part, would be happy to share our capabilities and expertise with Oman in the field of health, information technology, telecommunications, science and technology, human resource development and education," the Minister, who is on a two-day visit, said.
"India can also train Omanis in vocational and entrepreneurial skills. In this era of globalisation, we need to encourage both our private sectors to establish closer linkages through concerted and sustained interactions," he said.

The two countries on Sunday discussed the setting up of a US$ 100 million fund to invest in selected areas in each other's countries.

"India and Oman share the desire to elevate bilateral relations into a strategic partnership in all areas," Mukherjee had said during an hour-long meeting with Oman's Deputy Prime Minister, Sayyid Fahd Bin Mahmoud Al Said, after arriving here on Sunday.

Health Care's a Big Issue. Who Covers Candidates

Health insurance is turning into a top-tier issue in this year's presidential campaign. Just about every Democratic and Republican candidate has a plan to remake the nation's health-care system. But what kind of insurance cards do the candidates carry in their own wallets?

It turns out that this year, many of the Republicans and Democrats running for president are sitting members of the U.S. House or Senate — and are thus eligible for taxpayer-subsidized coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan.

But not all of the candidates depend on that coverage exclusively. Like many Americans over age 65, Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) has a variety of health plans available to him.

"I'm eligible for veterans' care, because of having served in the military, and I'm most proud of that," McCain said in an interview. "I have the Senate health-insurance program, and I'm also part of my wife's supplementary insurance that she has."

McCain is lucky to have so many insurance options, since he's a cancer survivor — he had surgery for melanoma eight years ago.

In fact, according to Marilyn Moon, director of the health program for the American Institutes for Research, the federal employees program available to members of Congress really isn't all that gold-plated.

"It's clearly a good plan; it covers all types of services that people would need, including prescription drugs, for example," she says. "But you pay co-pays and deductibles, just like most Americans who get their health care from employers."

Covering Staff, Too?

But what about candidates who don't have access to employer-provided coverage? Particularly those with pre-existing conditions of their own, or in their immediate families, such as the recurrence of breast cancer for which Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Sen. John Edwards (NC), is being treated?

Actually, it turns out that Edwards does get his coverage — and coverage for his wife — at work.

"Our family gets our health insurance through the campaign," he said. "And it's Blue Cross."

Indeed, almost all the Democratic candidates offer health insurance to their campaign workers. The lone holdout, ironically, is Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who advocates the most generous tax-funded health plan of any candidate.

"We haven't been able to do that, because we have kind of a low-budget campaign, but we're actually looking into that," he said back in October. "It's something we want to do."

A Kucinich campaign spokesman confirmed that, as of January, staffers still didn't have health insurance.

Republicans, on the other hand, are a more mixed lot. McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offer health insurance to their campaign staff; Reps. Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter don't, largely because staffers are volunteers.

Mum on Personal Coverage

As for the other GOP candidates? Their campaigns wouldn't say whether staff is covered.

And when asked how the candidates get health insurance for themselves, the campaigns of Giuliani, former Sen. Fred Thompson (TN), former Gov. Mike Huckabee (AR) and former Gov. Mitt Romney (MA) wouldn't divulge details. It's worth noting that, as a resident of Massachusetts, Romney is required by law — a law which he helped pass — to at least have health coverage.

It's a shame those candidates won't talk about their own coverage, says health policy analyst Marilyn Moon. Because knowing what kind of coverage they have would help illustrate how the health-reform plans they're proposing for everyone else — plans that rely more on having individuals buy their own insurance — might or might not work.

"One of the difficulties in terms of assessing these health-care plans is actually illustrated by the situations of some of these candidates. Not all of them might qualify for good coverage under the plans that they have offered," Moon says.

That's because Giuliani and Thompson are, like McCain, cancer survivors. And in the individual health-insurance market, says Moon, at least under current rules, people who have had cancer or another serious disease often can't buy health insurance at any price.

"Having the money to pay for a plan is not enough health club. You also have to be able to get a plan if you have a history of health problems,"health club she says.

At their New Hampshire debate earlier this month, the Republican candidates all agreed that individuals need to take more responsibility for their own health care. But apparently, that doesn't extend to telling the voters how much responsibility the candidates themselves are taking health club.

Patient Care Coalition Responds To Historic Budget Cuts To Health Care

The Alliance for Patient Care, a broad coalition of health care groups, released the following statement in response to the historic cuts to health care services proposed in the budget this week.

"Slashing more than $2 billion in Medi-Cal funding severely threatens the health care provided to California's low-income families by an already fragile health care system. If implemented, these cuts will erect more barriers for low-income Californians to access health services and will force tens of thousands into high-cost emergency rooms for care. The reductions would force doctors and other providers out of the Medi-Cal program, place increasing pressure on already financially strapped hospitals, and could force clinics to close their doors.

The budget proposal disproportionately impacts California's most vulnerable patients - seniors, those in foster care, the poor, disabled, and chronically ill - who are least able to access health care. Additionally, important services such as home health care and dental and eye care would be cut. Reductions in these services, particularly for chronically ill patients, will force many of these patients into long-term facilities and hospitals, where the care is even more expensive.

Making matters worse, the budget uses accounting gimmicks to delay payments to health care providers by as much as a month. When the state delayed payments during last year's budget standoff, some providers - particularly health clinics and home health care services - struggled to keep their doors open to all patients.

Cuts of this magnitude have not been proposed in recent memory.

These cuts may have been proposed to address a budget shortfall, but they will cost California dearly in the short and long run. Not only will the state lose valuable federal matching funds worth more than $1 billion every year under this proposal, but the costs of health care will rise for everyone as patients seek care in emergency rooms and other expensive forums.

We cannot afford to take such a giant step backwards in health care in this state."

The Alliance for Patient Care coalition is a group of health care providers and patient groups that advocates for greater access to care for California's most vulnerable patients in the Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs.

Quotes from representatives of various member groups of the coalition:

"It is inconsistent to talk about expanding health care coverage for low-income families at the same time we are cutting the budget of the state's health care program for low-income families. Cutting the budget for Medi-Cal will only exacerbate the problems the Governor's health reform plan was designed to solve. Fewer Medi-Cal dollars will mean less access to doctors for low-income families, more patients in emergency rooms, and higher health care costs for everyone."

- Richard Frankenstein, M.D., President of the California Medical Association

"The additive impact of these proposed cuts in health care on our most vulnerable low income frail elders will put their very lives at risk. Adult day health care and Alzheimer's day care centers are small, important programs designed to keep people living in their communities. They rely almost 100% on Medi-Cal funding. A 10 percent cut in the rate, plus five weeks of no cash flow will shut down a significant number of these programs, some permanently. Without the support of day services, most displaced individuals will end up in a nursing home, costing the state four times as much. "

- Lydia Missaelides, Executive Director for the California Association for Adult Day Services

"The Governor's budget proposals have severe consequences for our most vulnerable citizens. Delaying Medi-Cal payments supporting aged and disabled Californians in nursing homes by a month will create extreme hardships for thousands of Medi-Cal beneficiaries dependent on weekly payments for their care. The delay could also put struggling providers into bankruptcy, which would cause the dislocation of this frail population."

- Jack Christy, Director of Public Policy for Aging Services of California

"Cutting Medi-Cal reimbursement for dialysis patients would be counter-productive. Medi-Cal reimbursement rates are already so low they do not cover the cost of dialysis treatment. Further lowering these already inadequate rates could lead to access problems and higher rates of hospitalization for dialysis patients, thus increasing costs to a level which would more than offset the anticipated savings!"

Accord With Israel On Health Sector Approved

The Government of the Republic of Angola recently approved the cooperation agreement with Israel on health and medicines supply sector, signed in Jerusalem on 6th July, 2005.

This approval comes on the first series of the State Gazette of 19th October 2007, resolution number 96/07, made available to ANGOP on Sunday in Luanda.

The agreement was passed taking into account the wish of the governments of Angola and Israel of working in common towards the progress and social and economic development of the two countries.

This accords aims the creation of favourable conditions for the establishment of privileged relations between the two countries on health and medicines supply sector and allow that this cooperation be extended to other dominion of mutual interest.

With this agreement the two governments foresee a joint achievement of comprehension that the Republic of Angola and the State of Israel have in strengthening the cooperation ties that unite the two peoples.

Simpler health questionnaire may complicate insurance

The penalty for being morbidly obese has gone up. Ditto for schizophrenia and recent breast cancer. And anyone with multiple sclerosis, severe autism or antibiotic-resistant staph infection will now be automatically rejected.

Those are among the hundreds of changes in the latest Washington Standard Health Questionnaire, a lengthy and mandatory health-screening test taken by more than 100,000 state residents each year before they can buy individual insurance coverage.

The test is designed to weed out the sickest applicants and direct them to high-risk — and high-cost — policies.

This is the first substantial revision since the test was imposed in 2000, and will be given beginning in March for all policies that take effect April 1.

It's shorter, with fewer vexing medical terms (goodbye hypogammaglobulinemia) and supposedly better at reflecting actual claims data.

But the upshot is applicants who might have aced the earlier survey might flunk the new version. Or vice versa.

Even the questionnaire's defenders concede it's a rough tool for predicting who will eventually rack up the biggest medical bills. The worry now is that by asking applicants fewer and less detailed questions, the survey could snag even more people who shouldn't be snagged — while letting others with more serious medical problems slip through.

Sean Corry, a Seattle insurance executive who served nine years on the state board that oversees the health survey, said the board struggled to balance the need for detailed health questions and applicants' demand for a quicker survey. Corry said it's inevitable the revised survey will be less precise.

"The shorter it is, the more unfair it will be, almost by necessity," Corry said.

But the current board of the Washington State Health Insurance Pool (WSHIP), speaks confidently that the new survey is an improvement, designed with more current data specific to Washington state and applying the latest knowledge in predictive modeling.

Still, they admit they won't know for sure until the test results start coming back and they "watch closely for any skewed scoring in early returns," said Kären Larson, WSHIP's executive director.

Only state in nation

Washington is the only state that uses a standardized questionnaire to screen individual-insurance buyers. Insurers are allowed to deny coverage to applicants whose health profile puts them among the most expensive 8 percent of roughly 270,000 state residents who have individual coverage.

That threshold was a political compromise in the aftermath of state changes in 1993. Health insurers in Washington were routinely rejecting as many as 20 percent of all applicants they deemed too risky to cover. The Legislature outlawed the practice in 1993 and required insurers to issue policies to even the terminally ill.

Insurers responded by halting the sale of individual policies in Washington altogether.

To lure them back, lawmakers agreed to adopt the questionnaire to sort the sickest people into WSHIP, a high-risk pool for the uninsurables.

People denied insurance in the open market are guaranteed coverage through the high-risk pool. But its premiums are 10 to 50 percent higher than comparable plans in the open market, and only about 15 percent of those referred to the pool actually enroll.

Currently, 3,400 belong to WSHIP, many with serious conditions such as AIDS and kidney failure.

But the health questionnaire can trip seemingly healthy people. The wrong combinations of relatively minor conditions — from acid reflux to back sprain, nose polyps to kidney stones — can add up to enough penalty points on the test to put customers over the limit.

Last year, about 7,000 people flunked the health questionnaire, including more than 1,000 who successfully appealed their scores.

Responding in part to complaints the test was too long and complicated, WSHIP hired a Denver actuarial firm to revamp it. The survey was cut by a third, to 218 questions, and medical conditions were simplified or combined.

The actuary also took claims records from the five largest insurers in the state to better gauge their actual medical costs here. Finally, it grouped separate but related treatment costs to more accurately track the cost of an illness.

The score for failure remained at 325. But the individual scores for a host of conditions were altered.

Diseases penalized

Multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis and lymphomas, even ones that were treated and cured several years ago, now carry higher penalty points.

Autism and MRSA, the drug-resistant staph infection, weren't even in the previous survey. Now they are enough for instant rejection. Same for infants born very prematurely.

On the flip side, Alzheimer's disease health club, congestive heart failure or high cholesterol get docked fewer points. High blood pressure is now 52 points, but really high blood pressure is 31 points (the applicant presumably will get docked someplace else for related conditions, such as vision or kidney problems).

A woman with an ovarian cyst and a fibroid tumor would fail the old test, not the new.

All this is guaranteed to leave clients stumped, predicted Becky Hart, president of Health Insurance Connection, an insurance agency in Puyallup.

Hart said she keeps a medical dictionary handy just to guide customers through the questionnaire health club. She complains that some medical conditions have simply vanished from the test.

That leaves Hart guessing, for example, just what "conditions that impact fertility or problems with the female reproductive system" are.

"I suppose I will get more comfortable" with the new survey, Hart said. "But right now, health club it looks like it will be more difficult finding the conditions our clients may have."

Teva to explore strategic alternatives for animal health unit

said it is exploring strategic alternatives for its animal health business, including a possible divestiture. The Israel-based drug manufacturing company said the decision follows the strategic review it conducted in 2007.

Teva retained Bear Stearns & Co. as its financial adviser to assist in exploring alternatives for the animal health business, which develops proprietary and generic animal health products, mainly in the U.S. and Israel.

President and Chief Executive Shlomo Yanai said in a statement that the company will focus on its core business to maximize long-term growth potential.

Indonesian woman dies of bird flu health official

A Indonesian woman from an area just west of the capital Jakarta has died of bird flu, taking the country's confirmed human death toll from the virus to 95, a health ministry official said on Monday.

The 32-year-old woman from Tangerang died at her home last Thursday after her family had taken her out of a hospital where she had been receiving treatment a day before, said Suharda Ningrum of the health ministry's bird flu centre.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way of contracting bird flu, endemic in bird populations in most of Indonesia.

"She bought a live chicken and some eggs from a market and cooked them," Ningrum said, adding there were also chickens living in her backyard.

Two tests at two different laboratories confirmed the H5N1 virus.

Although bird flu remains an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human and kill millions.

On Christmas day, a 24-year-old woman from Jakarta also died from the virus after buying a live chicken from a market.

Last week, a teenager suffering from bird flu was admitted to a hospital in Jakarta.

An official at the hospital said that the teenager was stable, but was still on a respirator to help her breathe.

Indonesia, which has now had 118 cases of the disease in humans, has had the most number of deaths from bird flu of any country.

Excluding the latest case, there have been 349 cases and 216 deaths from the disease globally since 2003, according to World Health Organisation data.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Using Monistat to Cure Vaginal Yeast Infections

Vaginal yeast infections can range from downright embarrassing to very painful. To counter these yeast infection signs there are a number of medications that you can try health club. These medications can be taken in the form of home remedies, prescription drugs and over the counter relief like Monistat 7.

This over the counter drug for vaginal yeast infections is available in three different dosages. You can buy Monistat 1, which is a one day treatment suppository, Monistat 3 which you use for 3 nights and you also have the Monistat 7 suppository. All of these Monistat products contain substances like nitrate and miconazole.

Since the Monistat 7 is a suppository that you are supposed to insert into your vagina, you should read the various warnings that are given with this medication. You will also need to understand that the dosages of these over the counter remedies to your yeast infection can lead to some side effects.

These side effects will vary from individual to individual but the most common signs of side effects are intense burning, vaginal itching, and abdominal pain and in some cases you can experience bleeding health club. As Monistat 7 is placed in your vagina you should consult with your doctor before you start a full course of treatment with this product.

There are many people who will tell you that using Monistat 7 has cured them of there vaginal yeast problems but there are also an equal number of women who have experienced severe and intense torturous pain when they are using this product.

You might want to consult with your doctor about the various side effects that may result from using this product. You should also gather as much information about Monistat 7 as you can. This information should contain the dosage amount that you need to take for the different Monistat brands.

For instance with Monistat 7 the dosage amount is 20 milligrams which is equal to one suppository. You are to insert this suppository into your vagina at bedtime. The Monistat 7 suppository treatment needs to be continued for the full seven nights without any breaking of the treatment.

The warnings that are issued with Monistat 7 state that if your vaginal yeast infection has not cleared up after the recommended period of usage for Monistat 7 that you should see your doctor.health club From the advice of your doctor you will know if there is another vaginal yeast infection drug that you can use or what other remedies that you can try.

Viable Methods for Dealing With Vaginal Pain, and Yeast Infections

t’s a little known fact but most women, at least 75% will experience a yeast infection at least once in their lifetimes, and most will experience recurrent yeast infections. If you suffer from a yeast infection then you know that vaginal pain can be one of the symptoms.

Other symptoms besides vaginal pain include vaginal itching, a burning sensation, a rash, soreness of the vagina, redness around the affected area, and sometimes even a slight swelling in or around the vagina.

These are all common symptoms of yeast infections, and you might experience some of them, all of them, or none of them. This depends to a great extent on your present overall health, your susceptibility towards the yeast infection and the severity of the yeast infection.

Vaginal pain can also herald pain when urinating and pain during sexual intercourse. If your vaginal pain is severe in either of these cases, you should consult with your doctor immediately to see what relief might be available to you.

You should be aware also that some people have adverse reactions to medications like Monistat which are used to treat yeast infections. A lot of people have no reactions but it has been reported that some people might experience vaginal pain or a burning sensation.

In fact continued use of these drugs if you experience such a reaction can make your vaginal pain worse. As an alternative you have the choice of using herbal remedies to treat your vaginal pain but you should do so only if you’re certain you want to, and if you’re not taking any other medications.

If you are taking other medication for either a yeast infection or other medical conditions you should ideally check with your physician to ascertain whether your remedies will react with each other.

In most cases the remedies are harmless and are the product of common sense, but it always pays to be cautious. For instance remedies utilizing such things as yogurt or garlic are fairly harmless unless you’re allergic to any of these.

You can include these in your daily diet to help get rid of vaginal pain, but if you’re seeking immediate relief you can smear your vagina with unsweetened yogurt to dull the vaginal pain.

Or you also have the option of using a peeled garlic clove wrapped in gauze and tied with a length of unwaxed dental floss. You then insert this into your vagina like a tampon with a piece of the dental floss dangling to be able to pull out the gauze.

And if these don’t work you could always try using a vinegar douche to rid you of your vaginal pain. Douching isn’t normally recommended, but in the case if yeast infections, it can be beneficial if used properly.

Understanding the Different Yeast Infection Signs

f you suffer from yeast infection there’s a good chance that you might not be aware of it, or that you might mistake it for something else entirely. There are yeast infection signs which can tell you whether or not you have a yeast infection, but sometimes these signs are the same as some other infections.

That’s where if you think you might have all or some yeast infection signs you might want to consult with your doctor first of all. This serves a dual purpose, in that first of all it can be determined whether or not you have a yeast infection, and secondly it will help to get the proper medication for you.

If you think you have all the yeast infection signs, and decide to take care of the problem yourself, that’s all well and good because there are over the counter medications like Monistat available which can help you.

But if you’re treating a yeast infection and you have some other condition, you will be making your body used to, and in turn immune to, the yeast infection medication. What this means is that when you really need the medication, it won’t work for you.

This is a very good reason to take yourself off to a doctor as the first yeast infection signs that appear.health club In brief yeast infection signs include rash, itching, burning sensation, vaginal discharge¸ pain during sexual intercourse, redness and soreness of the irritated area, and a swelling of the vulva.

The most unbearable aspect of all the yeast infection signs is that of the itching. For the most part it can be unbearable and interfere with your daily life. The best thing for this is to use as far as possible remedy that will give you instant itch relief.

For this you can employ something like Aloe Vera juice, just daub a little on the affected areas with your fingertips or a cotton pad.

Other discomfiting yeast infection signs includes the burning sensation you might feel when urinating, and thee pain that you might have during sexual intercourse. These can both be troublesome yeast infection signs, and should be looked at immediately as they could herald other medical conditions.

Vaginal discharge is another of the yeast infection signs that can cause some problems although not all the time health club. Depending on the texture and the odor of the discharge you might have to take steps to help yourself.

For instance sometimes the vaginal discharge can be quite odorless and a thin milky-like substance. At other times yeast infection signs of vaginal discharge can be quite offensive and have a strong and pungent odor, at times yeasty, health club and at times sulphuric in nature, while the consistency can be cottage cheese-like.

Yeast infection signs should be taken seriously and looked at, especially if you get recurring yeast infection signs. This can indicate that the yeast infection signs are more of a symptom of something else rather than being the cause itself.

Top Foods To Avoid With Cold Sores

Foods to avoid with cold sores are foods that are high in arginine and low in lysine. Get to know these specific foods and you will be amazed how quickly cold sores disappear.

Lysine and arginine are two common amino acids found in foods. They are the two most widely researched nutrients that affect cold sores.

Here is how they work.

The herpes simplex virus is the root cause of all cold sores. A virus particle will enter a nerve cell at the surface and force it to create new virus. It will then explode the cell to release the cloned virus thus creating a huge open wound.

Herpes simplex virus is pure protein and arginine is the main building block needed to create new herpes virus health club. Your cells have a specific storage area where it stores additional arginine.

Lysine and arginine compete for the same storage space. The cell cannot create new virus using lysine.

If you have a diet rich in lysine, your cells will discard some arginine to store more lysine. The herpes virus, looking to clone itself, will avoid the cells that cannot support the cloning process.

A high lysine content in your cells often causes the herpes virus to give up and return to hibernation. You have just prevented a cold sore. Quite often you won't even know it.

Avoiding certain foods can be hard health club. Some foods above are very important for your health needs. They are considered nutrient dense essential foods. Quite likely you could go a week or so without them during the cold sore event without harm.

Keep your immune system strong by not avoiding these foods for more than a couple weeks. This avoidance program works as a treatment for a current cold sore. It is not healthy for a prevention program. If your immune system weakens, you could end up with more, not less, outbreaks.

An excellent alternative solution to avoiding foods you love is to increase your lysine during your cold sore event. Increasing intake of lysine will also help prevent future cold sores.

Here are some high lysine foods that are good any time you have a cold sore. They are especially good for balancing out some of the foods to avoid with cold sores.

Beef, fish (especially flounder), chicken, cheese, eggs, yogurt, apples, pears, mangos, apricots, and summer squash health club. Your goal should be a diet that provides about twice as much lysine as arginine.

Following a restricted diet, or intolerance of dairy products, may make these diet recommendations difficult or impossible for you. Vegetarians would certainly have problems with a cold sore diet.

A great way to reduce cold sores without the bother of a restricted diet is the use of a lysine supplement. Lysine usually comes in 500 mg. capsules and can be found anywhere. health club It is common to take 2000 mg. (4 caps) to 4000 mg. (8 caps) daily during the cold sore and two capsules daily as a maintenance dose to prevent cold sores.

Is large dose lysine safe?

Lysine is perfectly safe. Eight capsules daily is only 4000 mg., or 4 grams. No bad side effects have ever been noted. You often exceed this just by eating food alone. A four-ounce serving of flounder, for example, will provide the equivalent of 4 to 5 grams of lysine. The capsules are just more convenient.

Reasons Why you Need to Stay Away From Genital Warts Cream Treatments

There are many methods of treatment used in the fight against HPV (or genital warts as it also more commonly known). And these can range from naturopathic treatments to holistic treatments to surgical treatments health club. These however, aren’t the only treatment methods which are available to remove visible signs of HPV. For those who desire it, there are also various genital warts cream treatments available as well.

Of course not everyone will decide to go this route and quite a few people these days will try their hand at using naturopathic treatments. This might sound odd to some people, especially if HPV treatments come in the form of genital warts cream treatments.

Naturally enough there is a reason for this seemingly odd behavior on the part of people who are normally perceived to be rational, and that is the fact that, most of these genital warts cream medications have many side effects associated with them.

For a populace which is inundated with medication after medication which has sometimes has more side effects than benefits, this can sometimes be the turning point in their decision whether to go with a genital warts cream or whether to go with a different treatment.

What most people are wary of is the many associated side effects and how this will ultimately affect their lives. Admittedly a reasonable number of people will also throw this caution to the winds and for these people there is a choice of different genital warts cream treatments they can choose from.

These include such topical ointments as Imiquimod health club, Fluorouracil, and Polyphenon. Genital warts cream treatments can also include such things called Interferons. These are antiviral drugs which can either be injected directly into the genital warts, or used as a genital warts cream.

For the most part though most of these genital warts cream treatments should not be used if a woman is pregnant, health club as the ingredients contained within the genital warts cream treatments can be very harmful to the unborn fetus.

Another reason why people won’t use genital wart cream treatments is due to the fact that for the most part none of these creams are available outside of prescription by a doctor. That means that they can’t be bought over-the-counter at your local pharmacy.

Then there is also the factor that most of these genital warts cream treatments need to be applied – at least in the beginning stages for some of the treatments – by trained medical staff. Here again, the reason for this lies in the potency of the particular ingredients which are found in the genital warts cream treatments.

Genital Herpes Symptoms Will Show Up Within the First Few Weeks of Infection

Genital herpes is caused by the herpes simplex virus, and there are two distinctly different types of this herpes simplex virus. These are, originally enough, called Type 1 and Type 2, or HSV 1 and HSV 2. If a person has genital herpes symptoms, it will usually show up within the first few weeks of infection.

Otherwise some people might not display any genital herpes symptoms at all. And some people will not even notice if they have genital herpes as the genital herpes symptoms can be very mild to non-existent.

In fact some people can mistake genital herpes symptoms for something as mild as a skin rash. This also depends on whether you have type 1 genital herpes, or type 2 genital herpes.

Type 1 genital herpes symptoms are generally to be found in the mouth or the nose area, whereas the type 2 genital herpes symptoms are more likely to occur in the genital area.

This does not mean however that either type of genital herpes is specific to any particular area. These are just the more common places where the different types will display genital herpes symptoms.

Genital herpes symptoms can last for several weeks, so if you are sexually active you should try to abstain from having sexual relations from the time that you first notice genital herpes symptoms, to the time when they have all cleared up. Sexual relations in this case refers not only to vaginal sex, but also to anal sex as well as oral sex.

Genital herpes symptoms can include health club, sores, blisters, an itching sensation and sometimes even a burning sensation, and pain when urinating. Some people will also feel feverish, experience backache, muscle aches, or headaches. Yet still other people will get genital herpes symptoms which include swollen glands, and in some cases vaginal discharge.

Genital herpes symptoms of blisters and sores can become very painful at times. To relieve this pain, and also to help in drying the sores out faster, some people use a bath comprising of 1 teaspoon of salt mixed with 1 pint of warm water.

You will need to gently bathe or pat the area with this solution to find some relief. You can also try using an ice pack on this area if you think that it might help to lessen the pain from your genital herpes symptoms health club.

Treatment options for genital herpes symptoms include the use of antiviral medications, or natural and home remedies. There is no cure for the genital herpes virus, although the genital herpes symptoms can be cleared up with proper care and attention.

You Will Display Early Genital Warts Signs Almost Immediately After Infection

Genital warts are one of those subjects that most people won’t want to talk about in public. It is nevertheless something that is very real and just because you avoid it, it doesn’t mean that it will go away.

If you ignore early genital warts signs you could be doing an injustice to yourself. Some signs of genital warts don’t actually manifest themselves in a manner in which you will recognize them, but if there are early genital warts signs these should not go unheeded. The advice of a physician should be sought as soon as possible.

Genital warts are also known to some people as HPV, or as the Human Papilloma Virus. Some people also believe this virus to be a form of herpes although this is not true. The two infections are two separate infections, although both are classed as sexually transmitted diseases.

Genital warts are highly contagious, and they are passed from skin to skin contact. This means that a person may also infect themselves elsewhere on the body if they forget to wash their hands after coming into contact with the warts.

It’s best not to ignore early genital warts signs. It might be potentially embarrassing to talk things over with your physician but you can rest assured that this is the best thing that you could do for yourself.

Genital warts left untreated can sometimes lead to more serious problems arising like that of cervical cancer. However since some people don’t display signs of early genital warts it becomes difficult to seek treatment for their problem.

There are however other symptoms and signs which can be taken as early genital warts symptoms. These include a burning pain in the affected area, an itching sensation, redness or soreness of the area and also moisture or dampness around the affected area.

health club If you suffer from any of these you might have the HPV virus, in which case you need to start treatment as soon as possible. Due to its contagious nature your sexual partner should also seek medical assistance to determine whether they too have genital HPV.

Also there is a chance that even if you have sexual relations with an HPV infected partner that you might not display early genital warts signs or symptoms for a few months. For some people this can even be a few years.

This is one of the reasons it becomes difficult to determine from whom you contracted the disease if you have or have had, multiple sexual partners health club. There’s also a chance that you will display early genital warts signs almost immediately you are infected. A lot of this depends on the condition of your health at the time of infection as well as the type of HPV you get.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

A health care system to die for

You have got to see the trap. Otherwise we are in for a disaster. We are in for Canadian health care, French health care, British health care.

In “Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis” (Health Affairs, Jan./Feb. 2008), Ellen Nolte, Ph.D., and C. Martin McKee, M.D., D.Sc., both of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, compared international rates of “amenable mortality”—that is, deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care.

Tucked away at the bottom of that same speech is the script that most of the Republican presidential hopefuls are already following in one form or another during the current campaign. President Bush’s thoughts on the matter are worth quoting in their entirety if only to show that these guys (and that would be the policy folks and speech writers who will move seamlessly over from the White House to one of the Republican campaigns as the campaign progresses) apparently really do believe in this sort of market magic for health care. Indeed, it’s almost as if President Bush copied and pasted his remarks over from a Rudy Giuliani speech on this same subject. Or was it the other way around?

“Now, secondly, we can help people deal with health care. There’s a fundamental debate taking place in Washington.health club I’m on the side of, let’s strengthen private medicine rather than weaken private medicine. I’m on the side that says the more consumerism, the more choices people have in health care, the better off the health care system will be. I’m on the side of saying to small businesses health savings accounts are a smart way for you to be able to ensure your people. I’m on the side of small businesses by saying I believe businesses ought to pool — be allowed to pool risk across jurisdictional boundaries. That’s fancy words for, if you’re a restaurant in Chicago, health club you ought to be able to put your employees in the same risk pool as a restaurant in Texas, so you can get discounts on your insurance, just like big companies can get discounts on their insurance.

“And I’m for changing the tax code. The current tax code penalizes people who go shopping for health care in the individual market. If you’re a small business owner, you know what I’m talking about. It’s hard to go find insurance in the individual market because the tax code, frankly, discriminates against the individual relative to the person who gets tax — health insurance through corporate America. And I think all families ought to get a $15,000 deduction for health care, or individuals a $7,500 deduction for health care, regardless of where they work. (Applause.)

“And all of a sudden the playing field gets level, and it’s more likely an individual market begins to grow. And when you couple that with transparency of pricing and information technology, you can begin to see the emergence of a health care system that’s patient-reliant, that focuses more on the doctor-patient relationship and less on instruction from Washington, D.C. And there’s a fundamental debate, and I strongly believe the government, by passing good policies, can help us deal — help small businesses deal with health care — is a key issue.”