Monday, Dec 15th
Last update10:21:52 AM GMT
Health Glance
Cases of primary liver cancer, an often preventable disease, have trebled in the last 30 years, figures suggest. While it is not uncommon for cancer to spread to the liver, Cancer Research UK statistics show incidents where it starts in the organ have risen sharply.
Cases of cancer overall have increased over recent decades as people live longer and detection methods improve. But experts say hepatitis C infections, as well as alcohol and obesity, have helped fuel the spike in liver cases.
You may not be able to trust your mortgage broker, your car salesman or your congressman, but you can trust your doctor. Can't you?
Patients might well ask themselves this question when they learn that 94 percent of physicians have "a relationship" with the pharmaceutical, medical device or other related industries, according to a national survey of physicians published two years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The opposition groups' names sound catchy and populist: Patients First. Patients United. Americans for Prosperity. Conservatives for Patients' Rights. FreedomWorks. 60 Plus. Club for Growth. Here's who's behind them:
Conservatives for Patients' Rights is led by health care entrepreneur Rick Scott, the co-founder of Solantic urgent care walk-in centers, which he's spread across Florida and is looking to expand. While 80 percent of its patients have at least some insurance, Solantic also bills itself as an alternative to emergency-room care and a resource for patients with no insurance.
Responding to attacks on Britain’s National Health Service by opponents of health insurance reform in the United States, British political leaders from the left and the right have taken to the airwaves, the blogwaves and the twitwaves to defend the government-run health care system known as the NHS.
TwoBritish women who have become the unwitting stars of a campaign to derail Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms yesterday said that their views on the NHS had been misrepresented.
Katie Brickell and Kate Spall said that they strongly supported state-funded healthcare, but their descriptions of poor treatment at the hands of the NHS form the centrepiece of an advertising campaign against the proposed reforms in America. Both appear in adverts for Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), a lobby group that opposes Mr Obama’s plans for universal medical insurance, which have caused a transatlantic rift over the merits of the NHS.
In an editorial on July 31, Investor's Business Daily warned of end-of-life counseling in health care reform by saying people like Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance" in the such a system.
n fact, Professor Hawking lives in England, where he has been treated by their National Health Service. And by his own account, it saved his life. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told The Guardian. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."
The last time the government embarked on a major vaccine campaign against a new swine flu, thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has already taken steps to head that off.
Since the 1980s, the government has protected vaccine makers against lawsuits over the use of childhood vaccines. Instead, a federal court handles claims and decides who will be paid from a special fund.
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