Editorial Staff
Michael DeMocker
/ The Times-Picayune
LSU System President John Lombardi, right, and Tulane
President Scott Cowen sign a governing structure agreement for a new hospital
as Gov. Bobby Jindal and Secretary of Health and
Hospitals Alan Levine watch.
A stalemate over
how to govern the new teaching hospital that will replace Charity Hospital
has finally been resolved, removing an impediment to this crucial facet of New Orleans' recovery
and its economic future.
The new 424-bed
hospital will provide health care to patients, including the indigent, and
serve as a training ground for future doctors and health care professionals.
But the new facility is also an essential part of plans to create a new
biomedical corridor in lower Mid-City, along with a new Veterans
Administration hospital. Such a corridor is the most promising engine for
economic growth on the city's horizon.
The impasse over
the hospital's governance put all that in jeopardy, and that's why the
memorandum of understanding that was signed Thursday is such a momentous step
forward.
The Louisiana
State University Board of Supervisors approved the renegotiated agreement
with a unanimous vote after only minutes of deliberation. Tulane University's
board did the same by teleconference later in the day. That was the right
thing to do, and it's a relief that the universities have finally moved
forward on the governance issue after more than a year of wrangling over turf.
The Jindal administration deserves credit for bringing the
parties back to the table after an earlier agreement derailed in June. Chief
of Staff Timmy Teepel and executive counsel Tim
Barfield pushed to get the latest version of the deal, according to Dr. Fred
Cerise, LSU's vice president for health affairs.
"The governor
and his senior staff did an excellent job of bringing this issue to
closure," said Tulane University President Scott Cowen. "It would
not have happened without their intervention."
The end result is
not substantially different from the earlier agreement, but the deal brokered
by the Jindal administration was able to satisfy
LSU's concerns about its degree of control without sacrificing strong
independent oversight.
LSU, which will own
the new hospital, will control four seats on the 11-member board of the
private, nonprofit corporation that will run it, including the chairmanship.
Tulane and Xavier universities will each have one seat, with another to
rotate between Dillard University and Delgado Community College.
The remaining four
seats will be held by people who are considered independent and are not
affiliated with any participating schools or competing hospitals.
The independent
contingent will be chosen by a six-member committee, split equally between
LSU appointees and those of the other universities. But the board chairman,
an LSU appointee, will have the power to break any tie votes.
Preserving the
board's independence was important -- that's the model for successful
teaching hospitals elsewhere in the nation, and it is those institutions that
Louisiana
is positioning itself to compete against.
Gov. Jindal described the deal as "good for both Tulane
and LSU, but also good for Louisiana."
That's the most important point, and now that the governance issue finally
has been settled, all parties need to work on clearing other hurdles to this
vital project, beginning with the funding.
The facility has a
$1.2 billion pricetag. The state has set aside $300
million, and the nonprofit corporation will have to borrow a substantial
amount of money. But how much depends on whether the state can get FEMA to
pay $492 million as compensation for Hurricane Katrina's damage to Charity Hospital. So far, FEMA has offered
only $150 million.
That impasse also
needs to be resolved, possibly through the new arbitration process that the
Obama administration is creating.
Gov. Jindal says that his administration has heard that the
federal government is open to looking for other federal sources of money to
combine with FEMA's money. If so, that could provide another way to pay for
the project.
President Obama
mentioned Louisiana's
internal dissension over the hospital as the reason the project hasn't moved
forward. "The problem has not been an absence of resources," the
president said. "This is a classic problem where coordination in terms
of siting, in terms of disputes between state and local
players and activists, has gotten in the way of us going ahead and moving
forward."
It's good to hear
that resources aren't the problem. But there are bound to be other
disagreements as this project moves forward, even with governance settled.
That shouldn't become an excuse for withholding recovery dollars.
President Obama
promised to build new hospitals, "including a new medical center
downtown." We expect that promise to be fulfilled.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/editorials/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1251609801268020.xml&coll=1
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Jindal,
Tulane and LSU leaders sign new hospital deal
by Bruce Nolan,
The Times-Picayune
Michael
DeMocker / The Times-Picayune
As Gov. Bobby Jindal left,
is shown his seat by Alan Levine, state secretary of health and hospitals,
LSU System President John Lombardi, right, offers the center seat to Tulane
President Scott Cowen as they prepare to sign an agreement on the governing
structure of the planned teaching hospital Friday.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and the heads of LSU and Tulane universities on
Friday formally signed a power-sharing agreement that Jindal
pledged opens the way for building a new public-private teaching hospital
replacing the old Charity
Hospital.
Although some
financing still needs to be nailed down, "the state is absolutely
committed to moving forward to build this facility," Jindal
said.
With scores of
public officials, business leaders, doctors and medical students looking on, Jindal signed the operating agreement with Tulane
University President Scott Cowen, LSU System President John Lombardi, and
state Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine in a ceremony at the LSU
medical education building.
Jindal and a procession of academic, political
and business leaders praised the agreement as another milestone in the
region's recovery from Hurricane Katrina. They said they saw the new hospital
as a necessary resource to care for the poor, and as an economic development
engine to power the city.
The agreement
calls for the 424-bed, $1.2 billion hospital near Mid-City owned by LSU but
governed by a private, non-profit 11-member board.
LSU would have
four directors; four would be independent; Tulane and Xavier universities
would each have one, and the last would rotate between Delgado
Community College and Dillard University.
Friday's ceremony
marks the end of months of tough negotiations between Tulane and LSU,
recently brokered by Jindal, who ordered the state
to cease land acquisition for the hospital to bring pressure for an
agreement.
That stop-order
was lifted Friday, he said.
The state has
already set aside $300 million for the hospital. The new institution will
borrow another $400 million. The balance will come from the state's
settlement with FEMA for the loss of nearby Charity Hospital.
The federal
government has offered $150 million for that facility; the state contends it
is owed $492 million.
Jindal's pledge Friday was that no matter how much
it collects on Charity, the state is committed to building the new hospital
in Mid-City.
"Whatever the
final amount is, we're proceeding. We are not going to allow any more
delays," he said.
The state is
considering whether to go to binding third-party arbitration in the Charity
dispute. Jindal said the state will see the rules
governing the arbitration on Monday, and will decide later whether to proceed
with arbitration or go to court.
State officials
say the new hospital can be open by 2013, but critics who want to spare the
Mid-City neighborhood say it will take much longer. They say the Charity
structure can be restored and put in service much sooner, and have sued in
federal court, alleging that the state's planning process was flawed.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/08/jindal_tulane_and_lsu_leaders.html
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Jindal,
others laud step toward new La.
hospital
NEW
ORLEANS --
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal joined the presidents
of LSU and Tulane universities in New
Orleans for the signing of an agreement on the
governance of a planned $1.2 billion public teaching hospital in the city.
Jindal joined LSU President John Lombardi and
Tulane President Scott Cowen at a news conference Friday with numerous other
state and local officials who said the project is a major step in the
recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
An agreement
between the two universities - brokered by Jindal
and approved by LSU and Tulane a day earlier - ended a disagreement over how
much clout LSU would have on the hospital's governing board.
The accord means
land aquisition can begin again for the hospital.
But there are other details to be worked out - including financing.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/08/28/business-financial-impact-la-charity-hospital_6827896.html
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New Orleans marks four years after Katrina
By Allen Johnson
(AFP) – 1 day ago
NEW
ORLEANS, Louisiana — New
Orleans Saturday marked the fourth anniversary of
Hurricane Katrina still struggling to rebuild as President Barack Obama vowed
never to forget the lessons of the devastating storm.
"None of us
can forget how we felt when those winds battered the shore, the floodwaters
began to rise, and Americans were stranded on rooftops and in stadiums,"
Obama said Saturday.
He pledged that
red tape must never stand in the way of getting aid to Americans stranded by
disaster, after the George W. Bush administration was sharply criticized for
bungling the rescue operation.
Hurricane Katrina
made landfall near New Orleans
on August 29,
2005 as a Category Three hurricane and smashed through the
poorly-built levees surrounding the city.
Rising floodwaters
and hurricane winds ravaged whole neighborhoods, destroying tens of thousands
of homes and killing nearly 1,500 people.
But as over a
million people were displaced by the ferocity of Katrina, Americans watched
in horror television images of people stranded on their roofs or foraging for
food and water as help seemed slow to come.
Obama vowed
Saturday: "Our approach is simple: government must keep its
responsibility to the people, so that Americans have the opportunity to take
responsibility for their future.
"As we
rebuild and recover, we must also learn the lessons of Katrina, so that our
nation is more protected and resilient in the face of disaster."
Four years on the
scars are still visible on the city, world famous for its music scene and
historic French quarter, which survived the devastation.
Marshall Lee, a
staff psychologist at Tulane
University, said mental
health care post-Katrina remained woefully inadequate.
"It's still
bad," Lee said. "Four years later, services are miniscule. A lot of
mental health providers have not returned. Psychiatric beds are very
limited."
State Judge David
Bell, chief of Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, agreed in a recent news
conference. "We believe that kids and adults often times are
self-medicating because it is cheaper to get marijuana than it is to
pay" for prescription medication, he said.
On Saturday the
Times-Picayune newspaper reported the city's population is now at 351,568,
down nearly 20 percent from the 437,186 residents before the storm.
But Doug Thornton,
manager of the renovated Louisiana Superdome, which housed 30,000 people
during Katrina, says the city's economy is recovering, helped by the
reopening of the stadium in September 2006.
And he praised
Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) for helping the
renovations.
"I know they
have gotten a bad rap in New Orleans
and around the state, but we had a positive experience with FEMA. They bent
over backwards to help us qualify for every dollar that we could."
He also defended New Orleans, which
enjoys a better reputation for music, food and festivals than for schools,
public safety, and overall business climate.
"The people
of New Orleans are resilient and
resourceful," Thornton
said. "They have learned to deal with hardship and they have earned the
right to be respected for that."
On Friday
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a key
agreement to replace the hurricane-battered Charity hospital, a landmark
sanctuary for the poor begun in 1736 during French colonial rule.
Charles Zewe, vice president of the Louisiana State University
System, rejected widespread claims that the city's medical needs are not
being met since the 2005 storm destroyed six of nine hospitals.
LSU is continuing
to operate a 275-bed interim hospital and Tulane University
is maintaining at least 40 psychiatric beds, he said.
"Things are
going pretty well despite assertions to the contrary," Zewe said. "People are not dying in the streets. If
you are sick, you are being seen."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gvroXtV5sJCPX-L_4rM2hvwAnJoQ
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By GERARD SHIELDS
Advocate Washington bureau
WASHINGTON – On the fourth anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina, the Obama administration is getting good marks from community
disaster recovery groups and elected officials for quietly engaging Cabinet
members in the hurricane recovery process.
The president
hasn’t visited New Orleans since making a
campaign stop at Tulane
University last year.
And he won’t be at any Katrina anniversary events, instead vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard.
But Obama has
regularly dispatched administration leaders from the departments of homeland
security, housing, education and the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
recovery groups say. In all, the representatives have made 20 trips to the
area since Obama took office seven months ago.
“The day-to-day
interaction has been extremely good,” Gov. Bobby Jindal
said. “They have been very flexible. There are many examples where they have
been hands on and practical.”
The most crucial
step, officials said, happened recently when Obama approved the creation of a
new arbitration panel pushed by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. The goal of
the board is to settle more than $3 billion in disputed public assistance
projects.
The money would
repair everything from dilapidated college buildings to damaged police and
fire stations. The failure to obtain the money has been the chief issue
hampering the state’s recovery, officials said.
Retired Maj. Gen.
Doug O’Dell, who served in the federal Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding under
President George H. Bush, said although Bush poured $126 billion into the Gulf Coast
rescue, the arbitration panel would be an example of well-targeted funding.
“It’s a good
solution to getting public assistance behind us,” O’Dell said. “It is a good
model for the country in future disasters. We shouldn’t, after four years, be
having ‘less taste, more filling’ arguments over replacing police and fire
stations.”
But Obama still
has a huge list of needs to help make the region whole. At the top of the
list for Louisiana
is getting $1.5 billion in Medicaid money. The funds will be lost over the
next two years under a formula that disperses the money based on income
levels.
Louisiana income levels have been boosted by
hurricane recovery dollars such as those spent on creating jobs. Road Home
grants are also being counted.
Another lingering piece is money for Charity Hospital
in New Orleans.
The state is asking the federal government for $492 million to replace the
hospital. FEMA has offered $150 million.
The administration
has also not gotten its arms around two other issues viewed as critical to
the state: coastal restoration and flood protection. The state has dedicated
$860 million to coastal restoration and Jindal
would like the federal government to make a similar effort, he said.
U.S. Sen. David
Vitter, R-La., has been banging the drum for reforms to the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, tasked with handling the job of bolstering New Orleans-region
levees.
Vitter said Obama
has gotten a pass from some representatives of the recovery community.
The president did
not include money in the war supplement bill as Bush did regularly. And there
was no money in the recent stimulus package. If Bush had done that and failed
to visit New Orleans
on today’s anniversary, he would have been roundly criticized, Vitter said.
“There is a huge
double standard,” Vitter said. “The president made strong promises during the
campaign.”
Others see Obama’s
appointments to the critical agencies as a huge plus for the region and that
the Cabinet remains focused despite the administration challenges that
include national economic woes, two wars and the health care debate.
“You have to
remember that his plate is so full you can’t criticize him,” said Anne
Milling, founder of the Women Of The Storm recovery advocacy group. “The fact
that he is knowledgeable about the issues here is impressive.”
Federal, state and
local officials had a groundbreaking Thursday for a new Lafitte Housing project
in New Orleans.
“You would think
that they would be looking for attention but they’re doing it quietly,” said Flozell Daniels, president and chief executive officer of
the Louisiana District Recovery Foundation. “What we have seen is a largely
competent administration that has shown an interest through their actions.”
Obama can expect
to remain under pressure to produce in the recovery process with his
administration’s actions being closely watched. So far, so good, said
Louisiana Recovery Authority Executive Director Paul Rainwater.
“Coming up on the
anniversary, we felt much better about the partnership than we did in the
anniversary last year,” Rainwater said.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/56136817.html
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Paul Murphy /
Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS - Today we remember...tomorrow the
rebuilding continues. That was the theme at many Hurricane Katrina
remembrances in New Orleans
on this fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
City leaders,
first responders and others touched by the storm gathered at the new Katrina Memorial Cemetery
in Mid-City.
"It's a
solemn day today, but a great day in the city of New Orleans," said Mayor Ray Nagin.
The crowd paused
to remember the nearly 2000 people who perished in the storm, including the
ones for whom this cemetery was built.
"They put
this memorial together to honor those individuals who have not been properly
identified yet," said Nagin. "We still
have the DNA work that's being done and hopefully, we will be able to figure
out exactly who those individuals are."
Leaders also
thanked those who came to the city's aid in the dark days after Katrina.
Retired Army
General Russel Honore led
the thousands of military men and women who flocked to New Orleans to restore order.
Honore
says much work still needs to be done and rebuilding Charity Hospital
is at the top of the list.
"We need that medical center,"
said Honore. "The people of New
Orleans need to assist and the President of the United States needs to write that
check."
Honore also announced he's moving back to Louisiana where he grew up near Baton Rouge.
"I spent 37
years going around the world as a soldier and I've been living up in Atlanta," said Honore. "But, my heart's here in Louisiana. I wanted to come back and help
anyway I can."
People also
paraded down Tennessee Street
in the devastated Lower 9th Ward.
Neighbors say
rebuilding is slow here.
"We need
weeds and trees cut down," said Valerie Schexnayder,
one of the first back in the Lower Nine. "We need Katrina houses
demolished. Katrina houses are still hanging around. You can't really get
over this catastrophe, you know, facing it everyday, looking at Katrina
houses and high weeds and snakes and no electricity."
But futuristic
looking homes, built by actor Brad Pitt's "Make It Right
Foundation" are starting to transform the landscape.
Others are coming
back as well.
"Block by
block, street by street, our families are taking back that which was lost and
they do not take it back with the style of someone from another area,"
said city council member Cynthia Willard-Lewis. "Here in the Lower Ninth
Ward, we make sure we get double for all our trouble."
This fourth
anniversary after Katrina is not just about remembrance. It's also about
rebirth and a recovery effort local leaders say is finally starting to gain
some momentum.
"It's moving
forward," said Mayor Nagin. "Almost 80
percent of our citizens are back. The economy is in decent shape. We have 20
billion dollars worth of construction activity happening in and around the
city."
The mayor says he
expects the Katrina recovery to take at least another five years.
http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl082909mlkatrina.12b9fb333.html
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by John Pope, The
Times-Picayune
John McCusker/The
Times-Picayune
At the new lab at LSU
Health Sciences
Center in New Orleans, medical students and doctors
can practice procedures on computerized, simulated patients. The new
high-tech lab replaces that first-floor lab that drowned, along with the
robots, under Katrina's floodwater. Here Dr. Oksana
Nimkevych, third from right, works with medical
students Ariana Beck, Amelia Fromherz
and Paul Remedios.
A few weeks after
Hurricane Katrina roared through New Orleans,
the fetid floodwaters that had engulfed LSU Health
Sciences Center
subsided enough to allow a survey of building damage.
On the dank first
floor at 2020 Gravier St., amid a jumble
of ruined equipment, mold-infested walls and overturned chairs and tables,
workers made a sobering discovery: four bodies.
Adhering to
protocol, they zipped them up in regulation body bags and carried them out to
the plaza -- just as National Guard troops passed by, said Dr. Valeriy Kozmenko, who was part
of the inspection group.
Asked for an
explanation, Kozmenko and his colleagues unzipped
the bags to show what lay inside: four programmable mannequins, part of the
high-tech equipment upon which students and residents had practiced their
skills before trying them out on humans.
The water had
wrecked their intricately wired circuitry, rendering them useless, but the
Federal Emergency Management Agency insisted on verification before it would
cover the $400,000 replacement cost, said Dr. Russell Klein, then the medical
school's associate dean of alumni affairs. So the four mannequins,
technically known as patient simulators because they can mimic a wide range
of conditions, were shipped to the manufacturer's Sarasota, Fla.,
office for what Klein called "the first simulator autopsy."
"They came
back with the cause of death: drowning, " he deadpanned.
Four years later,
the teaching facility -- the Isidore Cohn Jr.,
M.D., Student
Learning Center
-- has been moved to the sixth floor, complete with replacement robots. Its
formal dedication will be held Sept. 11 at 5 p.m.
Until work there
is finished, students have been working one flight down in the Russell C.
Klein, MD., Center for Advanced Practice, designed for students and residents
who are further along in their training, as well as for LSU's practicing
physicians.
This glass-walled
space, which cost about $6 million, has four rooms, where teams can practice
techniques, and a much bigger room, filled with tables, where they can work
on cadavers. In an emergency, it could easily be transformed into an
operating room, said Dr. Charles Hilton, the medical school's associate dean
for academic affairs.
Tulane
University's School of Medicine
also uses computer-powered mannequins. They are housed in a center that was
unveiled earlier this year.
These devices are
invaluable for teaching because they give students a chance to practice such
techniques as inserting a tube down a patient's windpipe without running the
risk of breaking real teeth, Klein said.
"It's like an
airplane simulator for pilots, " Hilton said.
Kozmenko, the patient-simulation center's director,
wrote the software that lets the mannequins exhibit a broad array of symptoms
-- and emit an equally wide range of noises, including gasps, wheezes and
sorrowful moans.
He stood with
Klein and Hilton outside a room where four students were working over a
robotic patient that had been programmed to develop an irregular heartbeat.
Such sessions,
Hilton said, teach early on the importance of teamwork.
Also in the center
is a piece of equipment that resembles a video game. Flanking the screen are
devices that look like scissors handles. As a student guides them, a program
can transform the other ends of these gadgets into an array of tools for
procedures such as clipping and clamping, which a student can perform on an
organ or blood vessel that exists only on the screen. The machine is
programmed to show mistakes, too. The images of arteries and veins gush real-looking blood if an unsteady student punctures
them.
"It's all
fake, but it feels real, " said Dr. Vadym Rusnak, an instructor at
the center.
The Klein Center had been planned before Katrina
hit. To speed up construction, the medical school's alumni association took
over the project, paying for it with a combination of individual and
corporate donations. With the state's permission, Klein said, the association
assumed such duties as picking the architect and buying equipment. When the
work was finished, the state regained title.
http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2009/08/hightech_mannequins_are_perfec.html
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BATON ROUGE – LSU
Professor and Associate Chair of Biological Sciences Jackie Stephens recently
received a National Institutes of Health, or NIH, grant renewal of more than
$1.6 million to continue research into the connection between Type 2 diabetes
and fat cell metabolism.
“Type 2 diabetes
has a complex pathogenesis and can be difficult to understand,” said
Stephens. “There are literally hundreds of different reasons – many still
unknown – that people develop the disease, which is different than Huntington’s
Disease, for example, in which case every affected person has the same gene
mutation, which makes studying the detection and pathogenesis easier.”
Stephens’ research
focuses on trying to determine different ways that Type 2 diabetes is caused.
Her research group has already discovered several different ways that Type 2
diabetes can develop by changing metabolism in fat cells.
“There’s an
exceptionally strong connection between obesity and Type 2 diabetes,” she
said. “Most obese people do not have Type 2 diabetes; however, most Type 2
diabetic patients are obese. It’s a perplexing research situation that we and
other researchers around the globe continue to study.”
Stephens and her
research team have a different approach than most other diabetes research
groups because they study the pathogenesis at the molecular level and focus
on the STAT 5 protein. These proteins can act as “master regulator” within
cells because they control the production and expression of other proteins.
When she started these studies in 1996, she was the only one in the world
studying STAT 5 proteins and their role in the development of Type 2
diabetes. Today, she’s still one of approximately six groups, and only two of
those are in the United
States whose research is focused on STAT 5
and fat cell metabolism.
“The STAT 5
proteins can be difficult to study because we still don’t know all the genes
they regulate,” she said. “But, learning more about the protein means that
we’re learning more about all the genes that can be regulated by STAT 5.”
Stephens said that
there are three main research targets for the grant renewal:
Determine if the
STAT 5 protein activation is defective in conditions of Type 2 diabetes.
Identify
additional STAT 5 targets in fat cells.
Determine how STAT
5 regulates endocrine function and hormone production in fat cells.
The grant, which
was renewed in an extremely competitive process that is often more difficult
than the initial review, will support an additional five years of Stephens’
research. But that doesn’t mean that the work will end then.
“This is a huge
undertaking. It’s definitely what I would consider an ongoing project,” said
Stephens. “I do not foresee an end in next five years, but we will definitely
continue with the research until our questions are answered.”
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Monroe News Star | 08.30.09
Ingrid Gray
I have always
supported U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., but was dismayed to learn this week
that she opposes a public option in the health-care proposals.
Without this
public option, rates will never go down and the insurance companies will just
keep making billions at our expense.
I am on Medicare,
a government-run health-care program, and I love it. Letter writer James Rountree is right. We need it for everyone.
If Landrieu votes
against health care, I will personally never vote for her again, and I hope
the ghost of former Gov. Huey Long — who is, of course, responsible for our
statewide charity hospital system — haunts her for the rest of her days.
Ingrid Gray
Monroe
http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20090830/OPINION03/908300308
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By JOHNNY BROOKS
Advocate staff
writer
Saturdays usually
are reserved for washing the car, mowing the lawn, watching the game and
fishing or boating and haircuts — at least for many men. That’s what we do,
with a few exceptions.
Last Saturday
morning, however, I attended the 8th annual Louisiana Men’s Health Conference
at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center and came away thoroughly
informed, thoroughly impressed and thoroughly checked (no pun intended).
Author Jeffrey
Marx spoke about the importance of faith, men having strong relationships and
causes they believe in and are dedicated to, and defining greatness and
success by the impact we have on others’ lives.
Some men wrongly
define themselves by the amount of money they earn, the number of sexual
conquests they have and their competitiveness, or lack thereof, in sports,
Marx said.
I shook hands with
fraternity brothers, church members, co-workers and strangers. The
volunteers, many of them women, were awesome. There were yoga and tae kwon do
demonstrations, and door prizes.
Everything was
free. Free breakfast and lunch. Free screenings for blood glucose, blood
pressure, cholesterol and the feet. Free informational sessions on obesity
and diabetes, communication and healthy relationships, cardiovascular disease
and prostate cancer. The latter drew me to the event.
As an
African-American man, I’m in a high-risk group for developing prostate
cancer. My uncle, my mother’s older brother, revealed to the family in April
that he was diagnosed with the disease and chose to have surgery. A church
member, my Sunday school teacher, also told the congregation during the past
year about his experiences with the disease.
The message was
clear: Get tested, even if you feel OK. The entire conference was free, and
it was well advertised, including in this newspaper. That’s why it was
surprising to see so few African-American men there.
To be fair, the
lines were long at times, and several brothers got their screenings before,
during and after the informational sessions and left. But at last count, Baton Rouge’s population
was majority black — in the city, not the parish, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau — and that wasn’t reflected at the conference.
Mary Bird Perkins
Cancer Center and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, which were on
site last Saturday, also have teamed up to do prostate screenings at local
barbershops, including Webb’s at Government Street and Eddie Robinson Sr.
Drive. Perhaps some brothers will continue to take advantage of those
opportunities.
Also, as an
African-American man, I’m in a high-risk group for developing hypertension,
heart disease and diabetes. My wife, a registered nurse, my doctor and the
doctors at the conference have reminded me that I can prevent or delay the
onset of these diseases.
How? By eating
more fruits and vegetables, getting adequate sleep and exercise, losing
weight, consuming alcohol in moderation, if at all, and not smoking. I don’t
drink or smoke, and I’m constantly working on the other stuff.
At the beginning
of the half-day conference, my son and I got a reward for being one of the
father-son teams. I’m starting him off young being concerned about his
health.
After the
conference, I still had time to wash my wife’s car, mow the lawn and watch
some games. (I get my haircuts on Fridays.) Four out of five is good, too.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/columnists/55987292.html
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By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP)
WASHINGTON — The alarm
sounded with two sneezy children in California in April.
Just five months later, the never-before-seen swine flu has become the
world's dominant strain of influenza, and it's putting a shockingly younger
face on flu.
So get ready. With flu's favorite chilly weather fast
approaching, we're going to be a sick nation this fall. The big unknown is how
sick. One in five people infected or a worst case — half the population? The
usual 36,000 deaths from flu or tens of thousands more?
The World Health Organization predicts that within two
years, nearly one-third of the world's population will have caught it.
"What we know is, it's brand new and no one really
has an immunity to this disease," Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says.
A lot depends on whether the swine flu that simmered all
summer erupts immediately as students crowd back into schools and colleges,
or whether it holds off until millions of vaccine doses start arriving in
mid-October.
Only this week do U.S. researchers start blood
tests to answer a critical question: How many doses of swine flu vaccine does
it take to protect? The answer will determine whether many people need to
line up for two flu shots — one against swine flu and one against the regular
flu — or three.
The hopeful news is that even with no vaccine,
winter is ending in the Southern Hemisphere without as much havoc as doctors
had feared. It was a heavy season that started early, but it was not an
overwhelming one.
The strain that doctors call the 2009 H1N1 flu isn't any
deadlier than typical winter flu so far. Most people recover without
treatment; many become only mildly ill.
Careful genetic tracking shows no sign yet that the virus
is mutating into a harsher strain.
We're used to regular flu that kills mostly grandparents.
But the real shock of swine flu is that infections are 20 times more common
in the 5- to 24-year-old age group than in people over 65.
That older generation appears to have some resistance, probably
because of exposure decades ago to viruses similar to the new one.
Worldwide, swine flu is killing mostly people in their
20s, 30s and 40s, ages when influenza usually is shrugged off as a nuisance.
Especially at risk are pregnant women. So are people with
chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease and neuromuscular
diseases including muscular dystrophy. Some
countries report more deaths among the obese.
Still, some of the people who've died didn't have obvious
health risks.
"People who argue we're seeing the same death rates
miss the point — they're in young adults. To me, that shouldn't happen,"
said one infectious disease specialist, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel of Virginia Commonwealth University.
He spent the past few months visiting South American hospitals to help gauge
what the Northern Hemisphere is about to face.
Children, however, are the flu's prime spreaders.
Already, elementary schools and colleges are reporting
small clusters of sick students. For parents, the big fear is how many
children will die.
Panicked crowds flooded India's hospitals in August after
a 14-year-old girl became that country's first death. In the U.S., regular
flu kills 80 to 100 children every winter. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention has reports of about three dozen child deaths from swine flu.
Even if the risk of death is no higher than in a normal
year, the sheer volume of ill youngsters means "a greater than expected
number of deaths in children is likely," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center
for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "As a society, that's
something that's much harder for us."
___
Swine flu quietly sickened hundreds in Mexico before U.S.
researchers stumbled across two children in San Diego who had the same mystery illness.
A world already spooked by the notorious Asian bird flu
raced to stem the spread of this surprising new virus. Mexico closed schools and restaurants, and
barred spectators from soccer games; China quarantined planeloads of
tourists. But there was no stopping the novel H1N1 — named for its influenza
family — from becoming the first pandemic in 41 years.
Well over 1 million Americans caught swine flu in spring
and summer months when influenza hardly ever circulates; more than 500 have
died.
In July, England
was reporting more than 100,000 infections a week.
Argentina
gave pregnant women 15 paid days off last month at the height of its flu
season, hoping that staying home would prove protective.
In Saudi
Arabia, people younger than 12 and older
than 65 are being barred from this November's hajj, the pilgrimage to holy
cities that many Muslims save up their whole lives to make.
In Australia
— closely watched by the U.S.
and Europe as a predictor for their own
coming flu seasons — hospitals set up clinics outside the main doors to keep
possible flu sufferers from entering and infecting other patients.
"While this disease is mild for most people, it does
have that severe edge," said Australia's health minister
Nicola Roxon, who counted over 30,000 cases in a country of nearly 22
million. That's comparable to its last heavy flu season in 2007.
Cases are dropping fast as winter there ends. But Australia
still plans to start the world's first large-scale vaccinations next month in
case of a rebound, inoculating about 4 million high-risk people.
Most amazing to longtime flu researchers, this new H1N1
strain seems to account for about 70 percent of all flu now circulating in
the world. In Australia,
eight of every 10 people who tested positive for flu had the pandemic strain.
That begs the question: Do people still need to bother
with regular flu vaccine?
Definitely, stressed CDC's Schuchat,
who plans to get both kinds. There's still enough regular flu circulating to
endanger people, especially the 65-and-older generation.
Notably, South
Africa is having a one-two punch of a flu
season, hit first with a seasonal strain known as H3N2 and now seeing swine
flu move in.
___
Wash your hands, sneeze into your elbow, stay home so you don't spread illness when you're sick.
That's the mantra until vaccine arrives.
This week brings an important milestone. Hundreds of U.S. adults
who rolled up their sleeves for a first shot in tests of the swine flu
vaccine return for a blood test to see if they seem protected. It will take
government scientists a few weeks to analyze results, but the volunteers get
a second vaccine dose right away, just in case the first wasn't enough.
The vaccine, merely a recipe change from the usual flu
vaccine, seems safe. Federal authorities two weeks ago gave the go-ahead to
start children's vaccine trials.
"It's been a piece of cake," said Kate Houley of Annapolis, Md., who jumped at the chance to
enroll her three sons, ensuring that if the vaccine really works, they'll
have some protection as school gets started. Eleven-year-old Ethan was among
the first in line to be vaccinated by University of Maryland
researchers. He didn't even report the main side effect — a sore arm.
In the U.S.,
Britain and parts of Europe, vaccinations are set to begin in mid-October,
assuming those studies show they work.
First in line for limited supplies are:
_Pregnant women. Despite accounting for about 1 percent of
the U.S.
population, they've been accounting for 6 percent of the swine flu deaths.
_Children and young adults from 6 months to 24 years.
Babies younger than 6 months can't get flu vaccine, so their parents and
other caregivers should be inoculated to protect the infant.
_Health care workers.
_Younger adults with risky health conditions.
Schools around the U.S. are preparing to inoculate
children in what could be the largest vaccination campaign since the days of
polio. The government has bought 195 million doses and will ship them a bit
at a time, starting with 45 million doses or so in October, to state health
departments to dispense.
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
is negotiating with pharmacists to help perform those vaccinations. Massachusetts even is
deputizing dentists to help give swine flu vaccine, and passed emergency
regulations to encourage more health care workers to get either the shot or a
nasal spray version.
What if people not on the priority list show up? The idea
is for pharmacists to gently encourage them to come back a few weeks later,
said the association's executive director, Dr. Paul Jarris.
A concern is whether enough people are worried about swine
flu to get vaccinated.
"Complacency is a big challenge," said CDC's Schuchat, who sees a balancing act between overly scaring
people about the new flu and getting them to take it seriously.
Ten-year-old Isabella Nataro's
cousin caught swine flu at summer camp, and she readily agreed when her
mother, a University
of Maryland vaccine
researcher, signed her and her brothers up for a study of the new shot. (The
store gift card that participating kids receive after each blood test was a
bonus.)
"I'm kind of worried about my friends if swine flu
does come to our school," the suburban Baltimore girl said. "I hope everybody
else at my school gets a chance to get it."
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-54/1251708094222100.xml&storylist=health
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The New York Times | 08.30.09
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — Medicare beneficiaries would often have
to pay higher premiums for prescription drug coverage, but many would see
their total drug spending decline, so they would save money as a result of
health legislation moving through the House, the Congressional Budget Office
said in a recent report.
Premiums for drug
coverage would rise an average of 5 percent in 2011,
beyond the level expected under current law, and the increase would grow to
20 percent in 2019, the budget office said.
“However,” it
said, “beneficiaries’ spending on prescription drugs apart from those
premiums would fall, on average, as would their overall prescription drug
spending (including both premiums and cost-sharing).”
Moreover, the
budget office said, the drug-related provisions of the House bill would save
the federal government $30 billion from 2010 to 2019.
The estimates were
set forth in a letter from Douglas W. Elmendorf, the director of the
Congressional Budget Office, to Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Ways and
Means Committee.
Republicans have
criticized the House bill on the ground that it would finance coverage for
the uninsured, in part, by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from
projected Medicare spending, in ways that could adversely affect some
beneficiaries. In response, Democrats have said the bill would help
beneficiaries by narrowing and eventually eliminating a gap in Medicare drug
coverage, informally known as a doughnut hole.
Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president of AARP, the lobby
for older Americans, welcomed the report as evidence that “health care reform
will lower drug spending.”
“Opponents of
reform may use today’s projections to try to stall reform,” Ms. LeaMond said, “but we hope they will look at all the
facts before jumping to a false conclusion.”
The House bill
would require drug companies to provide larger discounts, or rebates, on
medications dispensed to low-income people enrolled in both Medicare and
Medicaid. It would also require drug makers to provide 50 percent discounts
on brand-name drugs in the doughnut hole, until the coverage gap was
eliminated.
The budget office
said premiums would increase, in part, because Medicare drug plans would have
to provide additional coverage, paying some costs that beneficiaries now pay
themselves.
“In return for
those higher premiums,” Mr. Elmendorf said, “enrollees would receive greater
protection against incurring high drug costs. As a result, beneficiaries’
spending on prescription drugs apart from the premiums would decrease, on
average. That reduction in cost-sharing would outweigh the increase in
premiums, again on average.”
But, Mr. Elmendorf
said, the averages conceal the fact that beneficiaries would be affected in
different ways.
Those who use a
relatively small amount of prescription drugs would pay more in additional
premiums than they would save, he said, while those who use a large amount of
drugs “would gain more from lower cost-sharing than they would pay in higher
premiums.”
The budget office
did not estimate how many Medicare beneficiaries might see an increase in
their spending for prescription drugs and drug coverage, and how many would
see a reduction, under the House bill. Mr. Camp said “the vast majority of
seniors” would pay more, and he said House Democrats should scrap their bill and
“start over with open, bipartisan talks.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/health/policy/31drug.html?_r=1&ref=health
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New Orleans CityBusiness |
08.29.09
by The Associated
Press
TORONTO — From screaming babies to frail seniors,
Canadian-born or recent immigrants, the patients flow continuously through
the waiting room of Dr. Kamini Kambli's
clinic. Most have made their appointments that day. None will receive a bill.
The receptionist
swipes their ID to verify their eligibility as Ontario
residents for coverage under Canada's
universal health care system. Kambli's family
medical practice will be reimbursed by the government.
Canada's system is called Medicare and is much like Medicare in the U.S.
for over-65-year-olds, except that this one treats virtually the entire
Canadian population of 33 million.
"It's one of
the best systems in the world. Everyone is guaranteed health care and it does
not matter if you're rich or poor or what your medical condition is — you
will be seen and provided health care. How can you argue with that?"
says Kambli, who used to practice medicine in her
native India.
To be sure,
Canadians have their complaints about their health care system — about long
waits for elective care, including appointments with specialists and selected
surgical procedures; shortages of doctors and nurses, particularly in rural
areas; and the growing costs of covering an aging population.
The Canadian
Medical Association wants to mix private insurance into the government
monopoly. There have been lawsuits demanding the right to buy private health
insurance. David Sebald, a Toronto-based health
care consultant who has lived in the U.S., calls for a co-payment
system to "eliminate the hypochondriacs."
But right now,
Canadians are setting aside their criticisms of Medicare and rallying to its
defense. The reason: Their system has been dragged into the debate over
President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals by opponents who say
Canada proves Obama is wrong — that Canadians endure long waits for critical
procedures, medical rationing, scant resources and heavy-handed government
interference.
A TV ad sponsored
by the conservative Americans For Prosperity Foundation spotlighted a
Canadian woman, Shona Holmes, who has challenged
the system in court. She spoke of suffering from a brain tumor and declared
she would "be dead" had she relied on her government. She said she
had to mortgage her home to pay more than $97,000 to get timely treatment at
the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
In Canada,
groups quickly sprouted up on Facebook accusing
Holmes of betraying her country and exaggerating her illness.
In a report on its
Web site, the Mayo Clinic said Holmes was suffering from a Rathke's cleft cyst near her pituitary gland. The Web
sites of several reputable medical groups list the cyst as noncancerous.
"We've heard
talk in the U.S. that you may die here because of long wait times, you can't
choose the doctors or the care you want and that the government makes your
health decisions for you, but none of that is really true," said Dr.
Michael M. Rachlis, a leading Canadian health
policy analyst who has written three books about Canada's system. "I
think there's a lot that the U.S.
could learn from Canada."
Rachlis believes the most significant lesson is
the Canadian system's egalitarianism: health care regardless of income, age
and health status. No one is left without critical care and, consequently,
Canadians live three years longer on average than Americans, according to the
World Health Organization.
"The flaw in
the American system," Ontario Health Minister David Caplan
said recently, "is that first they check the size of your wallet, not
the size of your need."
Obama has stepped
in to defend his neighbors' system.
"I don't find
Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform
think they make a good bogeyman. I think that's a mistake," he said.
In seeking to
spread affordable coverage, including to the nearly 50 million uninsured
Americans, Obama has said he isn't looking to copy the Canadian model, but
wants to build on the existing U.S. system with a mix of private
and government-funded insurance.
For all the
rhetoric, both Canadians and Americans appear in opinion polls to be broadly
content with the care they have.
A Harris-Decima poll published last month found that 82 percent of
Canadians believe their system outdoes America's, and 70 percent felt it
was working very well or well. The telephone poll of 1,000 Canadians was
conducted from June 4 to 8 with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
A survey released
this month by the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said more than
86 percent of Americans rated their care as good to excellent. But 52 percent
were very or somewhat worried they wouldn't be able to afford future care,
and nearly 30 percent said they were very or somewhat worried it would
bankrupt them. The telephone poll of 500 Americans had a margin of error of
4.4 percentage points.
Canada's system provides its citizens with coverage at a much lower
per-capita cost than the U.S.
largely because its single-payer system, in which the government picks up the
tab, greatly reduces administrative costs.
According to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, per-capita spending
for health care in the U.S.
was $6,714 in 2006; in Canada,
$3,678. The U.S. spent 16
percent of its GDP on health care that year; Canada spent 10 percent.
Canadians do pay
higher taxes than Americans — the average family pays about 48 percent of its
annual income in taxes — partly to fund the health care system.
"It's a
trade-off: We pay more in taxes, but no Canadian ever goes bankrupt because
of medical bills. You will always get looked after without worrying about
costs," said Kambli, the doctor.
Some disagree.
"It is in
fact a very poor health care system that regularly fails Canadians," Nadeem Esmail, of the Fraser
Institute, a conservative Canadian think tank, wrote in a newspaper opinion
piece published this month.
He said Canada has the developed world's second most
expensive universal health care system after Iceland, yet lags behind other
industrialized countries in access to medical technologies and
physician-to-population ratios. He noted that Canadians on average had to
wait longer to see a specialist or receive elective surgery than in other
developed countries with universal health care such as Australia and Britain.
A Fraser Institute
study found that the average wait time from general practitioner referral to
treatment by a specialist was 17.3 weeks in 2008, compared with 11.9 weeks
back in 1997.
The federal
government is aware of the criticisms. In 2004, it instituted a
multibillion-dollar plan aimed at reducing wait times in priority areas such
as cancer care and cardiac treatment.
The Canadian
Institute for Health Information, an independent nonprofit group, reported
that as of April at least 75 percent of patients receive nonemergency
surgeries — radiation treatments, coronary artery bypass, hip and knee
replacements, cataract surgery — in acceptable time.
David Johnson, 28,
of Toronto,
said he received immediate treatment after dislocating a shoulder playing ice
hockey but had to wait six months to have surgery to reattach torn cartilage.
"It wasn't a
life-or-death issue and I wasn't in pain while I waited," said Johnson,
a finance company employee. "I had the care I needed without worrying
about anything like bills."
The 1984 Canada
Health Act guarantees mostly free health care to all citizens and sets
overall guidelines for systems in each of Canada's 10 provinces and three
territories. Canadians are barred from purchasing private medical insurance
for services covered by the government, and doctors cannot charge patients
extra fees.
In Canada's
largest province, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan covers all medically
necessary doctor and hospital care, with fees negotiated between the Ontario
Ministry of Health and the provincial medical association.
OHIP excludes some
services — optometry, dentistry and outpatient prescription drugs — but many
Canadians are covered in those areas by supplemental private insurance, often
provided through their employers. Prescription drugs are much cheaper than in
the U.S.
because the government negotiates prices directly with the drug companies.
Given its
popularity, Canadian Medicare enjoys support across the political spectrum.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party is closest
politically to U.S. Republicans, has not moved to privatize the system since
taking office in 2006.
But
right-of-center foundations that support a greater private-sector role in
medicine have supported lawsuits on behalf of patients who claim that lengthy
waiting lists violate basic rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.
In 2005, Canada's Supreme Court struck down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance, but the
decision had no immediate impact on the system outside Quebec.
After lively
debate at its annual convention this month, the Canadian Medical Association
approved a resolution urging provincial governments to "examine internal
market mechanisms, which could include a role for the private sector" in
Canada's
publicly funded health care system.
Outgoing CMA
President Robert Ouellet told a news conference
that most doctors "believe there is an urgent need to fix Canada's
health care system," learning from European countries that offer a mixed
public-private universal health care system.
"We need to
stop deceiving ourselves into believing that we have the best health care
system in the world," he said.
http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/uptotheminute.cfm?recid=26544
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