Category Archives: Health

Business, Health, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Life Extension

6 Comments

Mice have been reprogrammed to partially rejuvenate.

Faster, please.

[Update a while later]

Here’s more, from Scientific American:

Kaeberlein says the study suggests it may be possible not just to slow aging but to actually reverse it. “That’s really exciting—that means that even in elderly people it may be possible to restore youthful function,” he says. Plus, it is easier to imagine a treatment that makes changes to the epigenome than to consider going into every cell and changing its genes. He also notes that the results of the new study are very similar to those seen when senescent cells—those that have lost function due to aging—are removed from an organism. It is not yet clear, he says, whether “this is another way to shut down or maybe reprogram senescent cells.”
Manuel Serrano, an expert on senescence at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, was not associated with in the new research but says he is impressed with the study and its results. “I fully agree with the conclusions. This work indicates that epigenetic shift is in part responsible for aging, and reprogramming can correct these epigenetics errors,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This will be the basis for future exciting developments.”

Let’s hope.

Business, Economics, Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Repeal, Delay, Replace

12 Comments

That’s the Republicans’ plan to undo the legislative atrocity that is ObamaCare.

[Update a few minutes later]

Democrats plan a fight to save ObamaCare. I agree with Stephen Green:

If you — or GOP lawmakers — aren’t mentally prepared for the howls, the accusations of racism/sexism/etc, the tales of woe, and the panic-mongering, then you don’t understand how Democrats play this game.

The ugliness hasn’t even begun to begin.

Sadly true.

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Sugar

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Is it killing us?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 75 million Americans now suffer from metabolic syndrome. If sugar consumption is the trigger, as 50 years of research suggests, then it might be as much of a direct cause of diabetes as smoking cigarettes is of lung cancer. Without sugar in our diets, diabetes might be an exceedingly rare disease—as it appears once to have been.

When Yudkin and others suggested as much in the 1970s, the consensus opinion among nutritionists and physicians was that dietary fat was the primary dietary evil; they considered sugar relatively benign. We have been living with the consequences ever since.

It’s worth noting this in the context that lifespan has fallen for the first time in decades: “If you like your longevity, you can keep your longevity“:

In story after story, we read about demographers and medical experts puzzling over what’s gone wrong. They point to heart disease, obesity, drug use, stroke, Alzheimer’s, suicide. The USA Today article notes that since World War II, it’s been rare to see a rise in U.S. mortality rates, and such spikes have usually been linked to highly specific events such as the spread of AIDS in the early 1990s, or a “nasty flu season” in 1980. By contrast, what we’re seeing now are rising mortality rates involving a broad range of causes, especially among middle-aged Americans.

Missing from all these accounts is a single word that ought to command unblinking attention: Obamacare.

While I agree that wrecking the medical-insurance industry is part of the problem, and may account for the most recent decline, it’s compounded by criminally awful nutrition advice from the FDA. One way or another, federal policies are killing us by the millions.

[Update early afternoon]

Business, Economics, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Life Of Julia

2 Comments

Part of the overwhelming feeling of relief after the election was that it offered an opportunity to escape from it, something that I had feared was lost, and would have been under continued Democrat rule:

In a state in which central planners call the shots, we are less and less free to choose. Individual enterprise becomes desperately unrewarding, or even illegal. Freedom fades, and bureaucratic dictates supplant the information and incentives that are part of free markets. Economic growth declines, and people fight over access to the favors of the state elite and their bureaucratic retinue, the overlords who decide who gets what slice of the shrinking vegetarian meatloaf.

That’s the real life of Julia, the direction in which the country has been heading for too many years now, while Obama has scolded Americans that whatever they earn, or achieve, or invent, belongs — cradle-to-grave — to someone else: “You didn’t build that.”

To watch America in recent years spiraling down into the life of Julia has been excruciating. This is a country made great not by conquest, or constraints, or cross-subsidies, but by freedom and free enterprise. Long before the welfare state offered free amenities (courtesy of American taxpayers), it was freedom that drew people to America, and fueled the melting pot — the real form of “inclusivity” — once they arrived. Our true iconic figures — if you plumb the American spirit — are not Julia and Pajama Boy, but sharpshooter Annie Oakley and that out-sized folklore lumberjack of the Western frontier, Paul Bunyan. This is the country that led the way to victory in World War II, and during the Cold War stood — and in some places fought — as a bulwark of freedom.

And here’s what the real Life of Julia would be under government “care.”

And a reminder: if you want to know what “single payer” health care would look like, you need look no further than the VA:

Nearly 600 veterans could have been infected with HIV, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C at a Veterans Affairs facility in Tomah, Wis. because a dentist didn’t properly clean his instruments.

The Tomah VA is investigating the dentist, who has not been fired but was removed from patient care.

No accountability.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

ObamaCare RIP

10 Comments

The Republicans have a plan:

While a full repeal would have to originate in Congress, Price’s nomination promises quick action to roll back regulatory changes that come from the blank-check authority given to HHS by the ACA. The controversial contraception mandate will almost certainly be at the top of that list. Price has opposed that from the moment Kathleen Sebelius issued the regulation, specifically citing its infringement “with our fundamental right to religious freedom.”

Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, reminded the Examiner’s Robert King that Price can easily undo most of what Sebelius implemented while waiting for Congress to act. “There are tens of thousands of pages of Obamacare regulations that can be rescinded, amended or left unenforced on the way to repeal, and we encourage him to make every effort to begin shutting down Obamacare by shutting down its regulations.” Such are the vulnerabilities of regulatory legacies.

Democrats have been quick to counter with accusations that Trump and his new administration will leave low-income Americans without health coverage. Obamacare also expanded Medicaid, which most states have adopted, and which accounts for nearly half of the claimed 20 million consumers who gained insurance after its adoption. Repealing Obamacare, its advocates claim, will leave those Americans in the lurch.

Trump’s second appointment this week provides a clear answer to those accusations. Seema Verma will take over the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after having worked with vice-president elect Mike Pence to craft Indiana’s Medicaid expansion, as well as with Kentucky’s Matt Bevin and a handful of other Republican governors. Verma helped create Healthy Indiana 2.0 plan (HIP), a program that mixes the base coverage of Medicaid with tax credits and HSAs to produce incentives making utilization more efficient and effective.

Live by the pen and the phone, die by the pen and the phone.

Business, Economics, Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Trump Chooses A Physician

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…to heal the health-care disaster the Democrats gave us:

While some Republicans have attacked the Affordable Care Act without proposing an alternative, Mr. Price has introduced bills offering a detailed, comprehensive replacement plan in every Congress since 2009, when Democrats started work on the legislation. Many of his ideas are included in the “Better Way” agenda issued several months ago by House Republicans.

In debate on the Affordable Care Act in 2009, Mr. Price railed against “a stifling and oppressive federal government,” a theme that pervades his politics. His most frequent objection to the law is that it interferes with the ability of patients and doctors to make medical decisions — a concern he will surely take with him if he wins Senate confirmation.

“The practicing physician and the patient could not have a better friend in that office than Tom Price,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas, who is also a physician.

That’s “Dr. Price,” to you, New York Times.

I’m sure that the Dems will fight tooth and nail to prevent his confirmation, but Harry Reid screwed them with his nuclear option. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s how Trump’s HHS pick wants to replace Obamacare:

I wrote about the most recent version of Price’s plan in detail when it came out last year, but here’s how it would basically work.

It would repeal the text of Obamacare, and replace it with a system that would provide tax credits to individuals based on age. Though previous versions had varied the credits based on income, doing so by age is easier to administer (HHS won’t get into the problems it’s had with Obamacare in terms of verifying income for the purposes of the subsidies) and it also provides more money to those who have to pay more for insurance. In addition, there would be a one-time tax credit to put in a health savings account for routine medical expenses.

Unlike previous incarnations of GOP reform proposals, the plan only modestly meddles with the tax bias in favor of employer insurance, and also encourages small businesses to band together to purchase insurance through trade associations and allows for the sale of insurance across state lines. He also calls for providing grants to states to cover those with pre-existing conditions (one way Trump may square his promises to repeal Obamacare while offering something to those with such illnesses).

It’s got some problems, but it would be a huge improvement over the current Charlie Foxtrot. But then, almost anything would.