Category: Health Care
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ACA Marketplace Insurance Costs to Skyrocket? Wanna Bet?
by James C. Sherlock We know it every time we see it. It is the time-honored Congressional ritual of “temporary” federal subsidies. Such subsidies for nearly anything that are positioned originally as “temporary” tend to be extended and then often made permanent entitlements. As with everything else, the people who get subsidies care far more about preserving…
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Highest Need Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Without adequate primary medical, dental and mental health care, people cannot function properly. They often go through life sick and untreated. By “sick” in this case I refer to less well than achievable with proper primary care. Just because there is adequate access to primary care in a particular area does…
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Virginia’s Law on Sterilization and Child Gender Transition Procedures
By James C. Sherlock A recent article on this site on medical and surgical procedures for gender transition in children drew more than 100 comments. There is no Virginia law that controls this process for children. But we have a law governing sterilization that appears to make sterilization of a child under 18, by extension,…
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The “Occasional” Butchery of Children
By James C. Sherlock The New York Post wrote recently: At 12 years old, Chloe Cole decided she was transgender. At 13, she was put on puberty blockers and prescribed testosterone. At 15, she underwent a double mastectomy. Less than a year later, she realized she’d made a mistake. Note the gracious acceptance of agency…
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Sen. McClellan Charges Racism as Va. Health Commissioner works to Improve Health of Black Mothers and Babies
By James C. Sherlock The left will not be swayed from invoking racism in every situation, everywhere. They deploy that charge especially disgracefully when conservatives attempt to help poor people be healthier, better educated, safer and more successful. Because those actually are not the objectives of the left. They simply don’t care about such things.…
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Thinking About Gun Control
by Bill O’Keefe After each mass shooting there is an outcry for Congress to do something. In 2021, there were almost 21,000 murders involving guns and almost 700 mass shootings (those involving four or more victims). There has been no responsible action at the Federal level because Congress seems more interested in political food fights…
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Don’t Break a Leg Looking for Baby Food
by James C. Sherlock Iodinated contrast media (ICM) are diagnostic imaging support drugs containing iodine that are given to patients to enhance the ability to see blood vessels and organs on medical images such as X-rays or computed tomography (CT) scans. These images provide greater detail when necessary to help health care professionals diagnose potential…
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Medicaid, Public Health and Chronic Disease Management
by James C. Sherlock From the CDC: Chronic diseases have significant health and economic costs in the United States. Preventing chronic diseases, or managing symptoms when prevention is not possible, can reduce these costs. Virginia pays a great deal of money every year to contractors who manage the care of its Medicaid population. It is…
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Personnel Shortages that Plague Virginia’s Health Facilities Inspection Staff in the Hands of Budget Negotiators
by James C. Sherlock One of the most important responsibilities of Virginia state government is to inspect medical facilities and home care providers to ensure we are safe when we enter their care. It continues to fail in that responsibility thanks to years of Virginia budgets that have consciously ignored the need for increased inspector…
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TAVR Tuesday and Barbecue Thursday
by Steve Haner Fourteen nights in a hospital, especially if you are fully awake and observant, is very instructive. Here are some things I want to share: The hospitals are understaffed and otherwise under major stress, to the point that patient standards of care have changed. As nice and diligent as everyone is, nurses or…
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Virginia Supreme Court Gives Hope to Competitors of Regional Healthcare Monopolies
Is the Virginia Antitrust Act now in play? by James C. Sherlock There is good news this morning for those of us hoping for more competition to regional healthcare monopolies in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court (the Court) overturned the decision of the State Health Commissioner to deny the application of the Chesapeake Regional Medical Center…
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Improving Petersburg Public Health is a State Issue as Well as a Local and Personal Responsibility
By James C. Sherlock The RTD today published an article “Petersburg is Virginia’s least healthy locality, and money is a big reason why” about one of my favorite subjects – the stubborn health problems in Petersburg and other poor urban areas of Virginia. The story references the latest annual study from the University of Wisconsin…
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A Lot of Unanswered Questions
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Painting racial slurs on the face of an unconscious Black teenage boy is wrong. That being said, a recent incident in the Richmond area leads to a lot of questions, including concerning the quality of reporting done by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. According to an RTD on-line story Friday by reporter Mark Bowes,…
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Unionize Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains
by James C. Sherlock If you go back to the series of articles I published here in October of 2021, you can refresh your memory on the dangers represented by Virginia’s worst nursing home chains. If you look at the complete spreadsheet of every Virginia nursing home from that data sorted by ownership, the bad…
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Fix the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock Governor Youngkin and his new administration have an opportunity to fix crucial problems in the Department of Health that have been festering for decades. The issues: How can Virginia regulate effectively its state-created healthcare monopolies? In a directly related matter, how can we fix the failures, famously demonstrated during COVID, of…