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Mission: To serve as a platform for provocative ideas, thoughts, and solutions in the health sphere. While the focus of the blog is on encouraging the voices of women, men are welcome to share their thoughts as well.
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The big day is almost here… The House is voting on the health care reform bill. President Obama has been calling undecideds like Rep. Jason Altmire — and about 57,000 (of the 59,000) nuns in the country defied the bishops — stood up to the man — and sent a letter supporting the bill — calling it “the real pro-life choice” because it lets pregnant moms get prenatal care. (Talk about Disruptive Women!)
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On Tuesday, Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old U.S. Senate seat — which means the Democrats lost their majority vote in Washington.
There has been a lot of doom and gloom news reports saying that this one election could destroy the health care reform bill. As Fox News reported Democrat Martha Coackley said in her concession speech, “There will be plenty of Wednesday-morning quarterbacking.”
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Health care reform legislation isn’t just being talked about — movement is being made, and the House passed its version of health reform legislation over the weekend. There’s just one glitch — despite voting for it, House Democrats are now vowing to stop this bill from becoming a law because of the anti-abortion amendment that would prevent women from paying out of pocket for abortions. “We’re not going to let this into law,” Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) told the Washington Post.
Loading ...No one wants to get the swine flu. That’s why so many people have panicked and are walking around wearing Michael Jackson masks. But should the new H1N1 vaccine be mandatory? A lot of people get a flu shot, a lot of people don’t. It’s your choice.But a new controversial regulation in New York requires all health care workers to get both the seasonal flu vaccine and the H1N1 vaccine. The New York Civil Liberties Union is arguing that it’s unconstitutional for the state to require the shots — especially since both the WorldHealth Organization and the CDC haven’t called for mandatory vaccinations.
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As Congress prepares to return to Washington DC, health reform continues to dominate the domestic agenda.
I have gathered up a number of resources that might help cut through the rancor, fear mongering, and distractions that have become the hallmark of one of the fiestiest recesses on record.
These are only 3, but there is an incredible amount of information here and they are among the best resources, in my opinion. If you know of others, please feel free to pass those along.
Here then are a few of my “go to” sites:
KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION
A short paper released by the Kaiser Family Foundation explains how government subsidies—an integral part of most major health reform plans under consideration in Congress—work.
The paper is only one of a number of resources available on the Foundation’s health reform gateway page, which serves as “a clearinghouse of key information, news and analysis about national health reform efforts. The gateway includes an interactive online tool allowing users to compare major health reform bills, the Foundation’s research and analysis on key issues in health reform, as well as Kaiser’s polling data.”
HEALTH AFFAIRS & ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION
“The latest Health Policy Brief (PDF) from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offers basic facts about the status quo and about how major pieces of reform legislation might affect the picture. In each of the areas described above, the Brief describes what’s true now, and what could change under health reform.
The briefs are geared to policymakers, congressional staffers, and others who need short, jargon-free explanations of health policy basics. The briefs include competing arguments from various sides of policy proposals and the relevant research supporting each perspective.”
NATIONAL HEALTH POLICY FORUM
I am particularly partial to The Forum as I used to work there…Here’s what you will find on their website, www.nhpf.org:
“The Forum has convened a series of small-group discussions to help senior federal staff navigate the ins and outs of the individual insurance market, as well as options for reform. To date, topics have included underwriting, rating, and regulation; insurance exchanges; risk adjustment; and actuarial equivalence. Future meetings will add to these fundamental building blocks.
As speaker slides and related materials become available, we’re posting them to a special Health Reform section of our Health Policy Essentials page. They’re also available under the entry for each meeting.”
As the New York Times reported, House Democrats proposed a hotly debated bill where families who make $500,000 would have to pay an extra $1,500 to help subsidize health insurance for the poor. (And if a family makes more than $1 million, they would have to pay $9,000.)
Loading ...Swine flu is sweeping the country — it’s on every news channel. Every five minutes it feels like there’s a new confirmed case. And once a school has a confirmed case, the CDC suggests it be shut down for two weeks.
Loading ...When a woman is born, she has all the eggs she’ll ever have. The older >she gets, the fewer eggs she has — and they go down in quality. As some docs explain, you don’t want to bake brownies with old eggs. But, last week, a report came out that Chinese scientists have been able to grow new eggs in mice.
If women could produce new eggs, then they wouldn’t have to hire egg donors, and they wouldn’t have to feel pressure from friends, family and gynos to have babies before they’re 35. The Washington Post reported that this is a step toward stopping the biological clock.
Loading ...Dr. Troy Robbin Hailparn was interviewed by Disruptive Women’s Wendy Grossman.
Dr. Troy Robbin Hailparn, is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology. She received her BA in Psychology from Barnard College of Columbia University and her MD with distinction in Reproductive Endocrinology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
At the end of this post, you will find not one, but two polls. We hope you will respond to these and share your opinions.
Gynecological surgeon Dr. Troy Robbin Hailparn thinks the labia is the most ignored female body part.
She was the first female physician trained to perform laser vaginal rejuvenation, labiaplasty and the very controversial hymenoplasty.
In 2007, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology released a committee opinion against vaginal rejuvenation.
Dr. Hailparn wants to change their mind.
At the May annual clinical meeting, Dr. Hailparn plans to present her 500 labiaplasty patients, and the 11 reasons she’s discovered women have the surgery. Of those women only 70 out of 500 had the procedure for cosmetic reasons.
“Everybody thinks it’s a cosmetic procedure,” Hailparn tells Disruptive Women. “It’s not. People think it’s like genital mutilation. It’s not.”
Dr. Hailparn took the time to talk to Disruptive Women about why the work she does is so important to so many women and should be endorsed by ACOG and covered by health insurance.
DW: So, what are the reasons you’ve found that women have labiaplasty?
TRH: The big reasons are: clothing, exercise and activities and intercourse. The labia get pulled in and out with intercourse, so that can be painful.
DW: Oh God.
TRH: Whether it’s one lip or both lips they get pulled in and out. Think about the woman who has to actually move them out of the way in a spontaneous moment because she knows and anticipates it and she has to shove them out of the way because he’s about to enter. Somebody living with this extra tissue has to accommodate. Sitting, exercising, or clothing are the big three. They can’t fit comfortably. They can’t walk because they have chronic irritation or chafing. They tuck them up to get them out of the way. They stuff them up into the vagina to get them out of the way.
DW: Oh God. (more…)
It seems like the childhood obesity epidemic is in the news nearly every day–as America’s kids seem to be super sized. In New York City, a judge upheld the city’s 2007 regulation requiring most major fast-food and chain restaurants to prominently display calorie info on their menus.
Loading ...On Jan. 26, Los Angeles mom, Nadya Suleman, made national news giving birth to octuplets. Now she’s stirred up controversy and debate about whether fertility treatments should be regulated. It turns out Suleman is 33, single, unemployed, lives with her mother — and already has six children. Knowing this, should her doc have allowed her to try and have eight babies at once? According to her mother, she only wanted “one more girl.”
Since the goal of most fertility treatments is to get one healthy baby — doctors usually implant a smaller number of fertilized embryos.
Loading ...The confirmation process can be bumpy. Recently, for those of us in the health arena, it has been a somewhat disruptive one. Thomas A. Daschle, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, made income tax errors that resulted in $146,000 in back payments and withdrew his nomination today.
What do you think – should he have stayed or should he have gone?
Loading ...A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that over three-quarters of Americans think Obama should make major reforms in our health care system, and a majority think he should start working on health care right after taking office.
What do you think? Share your opinions by responding to our poll:
Loading ... Change.
Definitely the word of 2008.
Along with change comes disruption.
This is a great time to roll out our new addition to the Disruptive Women blog – a weekly poll.
To launch our new poll, we are asking for your feedback:
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