“A radical thought suggests itself. How about making the nation’s children the template for universal health insurance and devolve to interested parties the building and running of the facility, subject to stringent safeguards?”
Writing in The Irish Times HEALTHplus supplement, Mr Maurice Neligan reverses his previous support for locating the new National Paediatric Hospital on the Mater campus. Calling for a rethink on a greenfield site, Neligan believes decisions were made on “limited and selective criteria” and without “honest debate”.
Are you fat or obese?
“Being obese is an internationally accepted medical definition where one’s weight is so extreme that there is a risk of comorbidity of stroke, diabetes type II [and] heart disease. Obesity is a wake-up call to do something about weight. It’s not just being fat.”
Tam Fry of the UK National Obesity Forum responds to the suggestion from a British health minister that doctors should tell people they are fat rather than obese, because such plain speaking would help more to lose weight. Minister Anne Milton told the BBC that too many NHS staff were worried about using the term ‘fat’, but she said it could encourage more people to take responsibility to tackle the problem.
Restrictions on painkillers
“This is not just about addicts, but little old ladies with arthritis starting to die because of this kind of medical practice.”
Dr Alex Cahana, a US pain specialist in Washington State, comments on moves to introduce a set of medical practices that prescribers would be legally expected to follow when treating patients with long-term pain from causes other than cancer. Washington may become the first US state to require a doctor to refer patients on escalating doses of painkillers for evaluation if they were not improving.
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