Why Americans are No Longer the Tallest
NaturalNews.com has an interesting article on average height as an indicator of overall population health. I had assumed humans had continually gotten taller over time, but that is not the case. The main takeaway is that it appears that trends in height for a certain...
Bernanke Says Rising Health Care Costs A Strain
An AP article carried by the NY Times covered Ben Bernanke's testimony at a summit on health care reform organized by the Senate Finance Committee on June 16, 2008, in Washington, D.C. It begins: Bolstering the performance of the health care system is one of the...
Uninsured Oregonians Flock to Emergency Rooms
According to The Oregonian, "Cuts in the Oregon Health Plan led to 'an abrupt and sustained increase' in the uninsured using hospital emergency rooms, a new study reports." From the report published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, the paper pulled the following...
Archimedes and the Oregon Health Fund Board
We Oregonians are known for blazing our own trail. Did you know that in 1907 Oregon was the first state to elect a US Senator by a direct vote of the people? Prior to that, only state legislators could elect our Senators. We value the process of public input and make...
Unfinished Business of the Baby Boom Generation: Health Care for the 21st Century (March 2008 version)
[vimeo url="http://vimeo.com/23830124 580" width="580"] In this keynote address to the 20th Annual National Forum of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, John Kitzhaber, MD, discusses changes to the health care delivery system necessary to improve health and...
Meyer Memorial Trust Award
I first heard John Kitzhaber speak about transforming the way we approach health care in the fall of 1989 at Emanuel Hospital in Portland. It wasn't until October of 2005 that I had an opportunity to meet Governor Kitzhaber. As I learned about his ideas for changing...
Poll on Oregon Health Fund Board Assumptions
We recently received the following survey results (PDF) from Chris DeMars of the Northwest Health Foundation: The Northwest Health Foundation recently commissioned a statewide poll, conducted by Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, on various health issues to help inform our...
Logic of the Health Reform Debate
George Lakoff, Eric Haas, Glenn W. Smith and Scott Parkinson of the Rockridge Institute published a white paper in the second half of 2007 about how to frame the health care debate. Here's their approach: Most health care reports advocate a policy, describe it, and...
Words Matter
Chris DeMars of the Northwest Health Foundation shared some recent research from Lake Research Partners, a firm hired by the Herndon Alliance to help them craft effective messages regarding health reform. These are the specific words and phrases that (based on this...
A Needed Speech About Health Care Rationing
Jim Sabin, clinical professor in the departments of Ambulatory Care/Prevention and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, filed the post below on his blog, "Health Care Organizational Ethics." A Needed Speech about Health Care Rationing The October “Election 2008”...
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