Let’s talk about health care

I am very glad that the US Senate has agreed to have a public discussion of a plan to provide health care coverage for the citizens of the United States. As do many of my fellow citizens, I do not agree with each and every aspect of the current bill, but I am glad to have something that achieves important goals for my country.

If the USA is to be a world leader, we must ensure that our citizens are capable of accomplishing new, important tasks—inventing, creating, reproducing—and being healthy is a critical part of it. Moreover, ending exploitive actions by health insurance entities (today’s equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt’s trusts) will help the US be more competitive, too.

Give the US a sensible health-care policy, and it will be in a better position. Let’s have the debate. Let’s figure out how to make it a good policy, regardless of political affiliation.

Fiore on health care

Doctor Decline.

Run along

This was a nice headline to encounter when I got back from today’s too-short run: “Want to live a long life? Run.” That’s what some headline writer chose for an article in Reuters by Maggie Fox. Here’s the first few paragraphs of her story.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running. A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner’s club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.

Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, researchers at Stanford University in California found.

“At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls,” Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Read Ms. Fox’s article. Select from other coverage of the story, as aggregated by Google.

Why was it too short? I had to hustle to the smallest room in the house. Still, it qualified as an official run.

Meanwhile, can someone explain to me why most people who talk about “the pounding” of running are people who do not run?

OneVote08

One.org, which was founded by a wide-ranging group of aid organizations (Bread for the World, CARE, DATA, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Plan USA, Save the Children US, World Concern, and World Vision) and has mounted a large and sustained effort to reduce extreme poverty and health crises around the world, is focusing on the coming US presidential election. In an effort to ensure that everyONE is on the same side regarding health and poverty, One has established a Web site that allows folks to examine candidates’ views, track their actions, and so forth.