Health Care and Reform Part 2

It was reported Sunday that the ‘public option’ portion requirement of the Reform Bill might be reconsidered by the Administration. Not so!



Here it is: ABC News reports that “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the Democratic-controlled House simply won't approve the overhaul [of health care] without it [the public option]. ‘There's no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,’ Pelosi, D-Calif., said after a round-table in San Francisco.”



It is the public option of the Reform Bill that is contrary to the basic principles that govern this country’s economy. Experience with government bureaucratic excess should alert all Americans of the hazards that a public option would impose on economic well being of its citizenry. Most of us have dealt with the inefficiency of governmental bureaucracy. Don’t we have enough government intervention? It’s true that the system is broken. So let’s hit the target: pharmaceuticals and insurance companies.



On the other side we have this ABC News report: "Arizona Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, signaled that he opposes requiring insurance companies nationwide to provide coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions; requiring them to charge everyone the same rate regardless of health status; and requiring all Americans to carry health insurance." Now what’s wrong with that?  So the government wants to require me to carry health insurance?  If I don't, I'll go to prison or pay a healthy fine?



What’s going on here? Who’s on first base? Who’s on second?



I just don’t understand what the difficulty is. We know that pharmaceuticals are raking in the big bucks – how else can they afford those ghastly ads on TV? “Take this for your ailment, but the side effects, if you have a cold, are pregnant, take viagra cialis online pharmacy pharmacy, eat candy, or smoke, might kill you. So consult with your doctor if you have any symptoms such as vomiting, dizziness, or loss of bowel control.”



And the insurance companies are no better. Just try to get them to pay for an “extraordinary” procedure that might save your life. Or after a major natural catastrophe, you aren’t covered because it was wind that destroyed your house and not flooding or the other way around. I know that’s not a health issue, but you get the idea.



Where is our backbone? I cannot believe that our Congressmen and women won’t face the real problem. I don’t have the latest information but, in the 2002 election cycle, brand name drug manufacturers donated: Barr Labs $375,401; Eli Lilly $1.6 million; Pfizer $1.9 million. Almost 80 percent of the cash was given to Republican candidates. Source: Center for Responsive Politics. What does that tell you? I wonder how much the Democrats got? You judge. Call your Congressman; ask him.

Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival about Web 2.0 and Medicine

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Medicine 2.0 is a bi-weekly blog carnival which collects some of the most interesting posts about Web 2.0 and online pharmacy. The archive is available here.

A blog carnival is a blog event similar to a magazine dedicated to a particular topic. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains links to other blog articles on the particular topic. According to Wikipedia, "Web 2.0 is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. "

I added a #Medicine2.0 hash tag on Twitter and you can find all related posts there as well.

A Google Presentation of the Medicine 2.0 carnival:



Word cloud of the full text submissions of this edition of the Medicine 2.0 carnival:



Blog Posts

Why do we blog and other important questions. Biomedicine on Display.
I regret every single post as soon as I’ve posted it. It could always have been done better. But when I take a look at it a few months later, I often think it’s pretty good.

Science 2.0: You Say You Want a Revolution? HHMI Bulletin, November 2008.
"Blogs are an easy way to communicate and distribute knowledge"

10 Reasons Why I Use Twitter. Bertalan Meskó.
Jen McCabe Gorman: "When people ask why I tweet, I will refer them to this link and say “Berci hits the nail on the head.”

Strengths and Challenges of Medical Education in Virtual Worlds. Dr. Shock, MD, PhD.
The educational opportunity in Virtual Worlds such as Second Life may not be a replacement for the doctor- or nurse-patient interaction or relationship, but they may serve as an adjunct orpre- or post-learning tool.

The Rise of the Personal Health Record. Health Care Law Blog.
PHRs bring a new dimension to the debate over how to create an interoperable health information network. The shift of power into the hands of patients could bring about a sustainable model.

Twitter Updates from the Severe Asthma Workshop at the 2008 Annual Meeting of American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI). Clinical Cases and Images - Blog.
The first attempt of using Twitter to post updates from the 2008 Annual Meeting of American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI).

New Idea: Use Twitter for Daily Q&A for Board Preparation. Allergy Notes.
During our meeting at the 2008 ACAAI conference, Tao Le shared that The First Aid team was planning to use Twitter for daily Q&A sessions.

60 Million Health 2.0 Users BUT… Patient Centric Healthcare.
I think we are all still waiting on the final business models to find the profitable solutions.

eHealth (web-based behavior change programs) in the Toronto Star. Gunther Eysenbach's random research rants.
Personal health records (and PHR platforms like Google Health and Microsoft Healthvault), sensors, Ubiquitous/pervasive computing, smart appliances and smart home-care devices will make it easier for users to aggregate and manage automatically tracked data.

How Good Are Doctor Rating Sites? e-Patients.net.
Ruth Given has written a 39-page informal analysis entitled, MD Rating Websites: Current State of the Space and Future Prospects and JohnGrohol of e-Patients.net comments on it.

AMIA Presentation on Web 2.0 for Clinical Decision Support. eHealth.
Three examples were given: Clinfowiki - a wiki devoted to clinical informatics, Partners HealthCare eRooms, Epic Systems Corporation's Community Library.

Another Second Life Medical Program: Virtual Ability Island. Medical Education Blog.
Their mission is to enable people with a wide range of disabilities to enter into virtual worlds like Second Life®, and provide them with a supporting environment once there.

IBM many eyes wikified. Yokofakun.
"Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis."

Presentations

Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library. Presentation by Lei Wang, linked by David Rohtman.

Pathology Visions 2008 presentations by Digital Pathology Blog.

References:
Announcement: Will Host Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival about Web 2.0 and Medicine
Medicine 2.0, Blog Carnival About Web 2.0 and Medicine, Year 1, Issue 9
Food Allergen Avoidance. Allergy Cases.
Wordle is a website for generating “word clouds”
Image source: ScienceRoll, a Creative Commons License.

Updated: 11/24/2008

New Medical Control Doctor

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Hey everyone! We have a brand new Medical Control cheap cialis at the helm! Dr. Otto Dickman has agreed to come play with us! Though we got very close to Dr. Engar and are sorry to see him go, we are excited to get to know Dr. Dickman. He will be meeting with us soon so stay tuned; you don't want to miss that meeting. If you get a chance, let him know we are glad to have him aboard.

Sexual Health Sundays: Sasha Langford on Consent

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Sasha Langford is a Communication Major at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., currently on exchange in Istanbul, Turkey. Sasha loves to talk and write about media, consumer culture, and gender, and hopes to pursue a career in media advocacy work to help challenge the dominant beliefs surrounding these issues. She is also a fan of consented sex, the main thing along with her life experience giving her authority to write on the topic in this piece. For more of Sasha's writing check out her blog at www.cultureshellshock.blogspot.com.

Remember that song from elementary school “My body’s nobody’s body but mine”?  As cheesy and funny as it might have sounded back then, the lyrics most certainly are true.  It is up to you to decide what you do with your own body, and what others are allowed to do with it.  When it comes to sex, consent is a verbal agreement to ensure that these decisions of yours are respected.  

Giving your sexual consent means giving your approval towards doing a given sexual (or just generally physically intimate) activity with another person.  But consent isn’t just a casual “yes”.  It is a willingness, an enthusiasm. You can’t adequately give consent when either or both you and the other person are intoxicated, if you’re under any kind of pressure, or if was just assumed you wanted to have sex and you were never asked in the first place.  Consent is a big articulated “Yay!” inspired by your attraction or curiosity and backed up by your sense of trust, safety, and comfort. 

What you want to consent to do or not do is incredibly personal and specific.  By consenting to do one thing with a person, you have not given them permission to do whatever they like.  You can agree to make out but not take off your clothes, to have oral sex but not intercourse, to have intercourse today but not tomorrow, or any combination under the sun that makes you feel good.  Up until shockingly recently in Canada, rape within marriage wasn’t criminalized because it was believed that when a person got married she/he was consenting to have any kind of sex at any moment with her/his spouse for the rest of her/his life.  Of course this is absurd—no matter how much we may be attracted to someone or love or trust him or her, there are bound to be (many) times that we don’t feel like engaging sexually with them, and we always have the right not to want to.    You give consent as you go—it is dependent on the moment, and you are always welcome to change your mind.

 One of the most important things to keep in mind with regards to consent is that you do not owe anyone sex (neither does anyone owe you sex).  There is no instance where someone else has the right to have sex with you when you don’t want to.  Even if a sex worker’s client has just paid her/him for sex, and then she/he doesn’t want to have it, the client still has no right to rape her/him.  Even if you picked someone up at a bar and brought them back to your place and are lying in bed naked with them, you do not owe them sex.  Even if you’ve been with the same partner for years and you’ve had sex a hundred times, you do not owe them sex the 101^st time.  Even if you’re about to give your partner an orgasm but you suddenly don’t feel safe and want to stop, you do not owe them that orgasm. Your comfort and safety are far more important than some orgasm.

While some might say that “wanting to have sex” and “feeling violated” are two complete opposites without any gray zone, I believe that in practice it is not so simple.  As crazy as it sounds, sometimes you might not be sure how you feel about a sexual situation in the moment. After all, sex and physical intimacy in general put us in a very vulnerable place where we are likely to feel a whole range of complicated emotions. Maybe you aren’t exactly sure whether you’re enjoying what’s happening or whether it’s making you feel a bit uncomfortable. The best bet is to first take a moment and let your partner know how you’re feeling (See Sexual order cialis Sundays: Communication).  From there, there are lots of options.  Maybe you’d feel best if you switched to a different sexual activity with your partner.  Maybe you just want to make out or cuddle for a while and see how that feels.  Or, maybe you come to the conclusion you’re really not comfortable being in a sexual place right now, and you want to do something else entirely. Any combination of these options is perfect and awesome; remember you’re the only one who can decide what’s best for your body at any given time.  Sex is about mutual pleasure, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice yours out of a worry of “ruining the moment” or “breaking the mood”.  What kind of “sexy mood” do you have going anyway if you’re not feeling sexy about what’s happening?

If your partner ever makes you feel bad about stopping a sexual activity, I will say as a rule that this is not a good sexual partner.  I repeat, anyone who makes you feel guilty for not wanting to have sex is not someone worth having sex with.  If you tell a partner you don’t want to do a particular sexual activity, then they talk you into you it and you end up doing it, this is not consent.  In fact, this could even be assault.  While I said that consent is a verbal agreement to do something, if you are only saying ‘yes’ because of pressure and not because of your own desire, then you are not being honest with your partner or yourself, and that word is meaningless.  “No” is always, always an option.

If consent is a verbal affirmation, does that mean one has to go through the question and answer process every single time one does something sexual with someone?  Is someone’s body language a good enough indicator of their desire? Some would say that body language alone is never sufficient, but I believe that this can be dependent on any given sexual relationship.  I’ll admit that in my current relationship with my long-term partner, we are comfortable using body language as a gauge of our desire most of the time and don’t always feel the need to have a verbal discussion prior to each sexual activity.  That being said, even if you have a trusting relationship and you are doing a sexual activity you have done before many times, you can never fully assume how your partner is feeling.  It is always the best idea to throw in a quick “How do you feel about doing ______ with me right now?” before physically going ahead to ensure that everyone involved is happy and comfortable.

Sex can be wonderful, but it is only so if everyone involved wants it to be happening.  The bottom line is trust your instincts and communicate.  Love yourself for being the amazing person that you are, and know that you deserve to feel safe and respected.  Your body is nobody’s body but yours!

  

Resources:

 

http://www.scarleteen.com/resource/boyfriend/consent_is_sexy