Paul Testa of New Health Dialogue Blog takes the notion of a carnival to heart while hosting this week’s edition of Health Wonk Review: All’s Fair in Love and Health Reform. Join him as he takes us along the Midway that is Pennsylvania Avenue, the big tent of bipartisanship, the funhouse mirrors of the health reform debates, and the roller coaster rides in Congress. Great edition!
And in other news…
Think you can safely text while driving? Studies show that drivers overestimate their ability to multitask behind the wheel. This game from the new York Times measures how your reaction time is affected by external distractions: Texting While Driving Simulator.
West Virginia touts progress one year into privatization. Cited among the successes: 154 insurance companies have active workers compensation policies in the voluntary market, the unfunded liability on “old fund” claims has dropped by more than half to $1,5 billion, and claim protests have fallen 68%.
Attorney Jon Gelman looks at the challenges that declining salaries and unemployment pose to workers’ compensation.
Roberto Ceniceros is blogging from the Disability Management Employer Coalition conference. His report yesterday focused on the generational impact on disability, with each generation facing different disability drivers.
James Dao in the New York Times posts about a new study pointing to an increase in mental health diagnoses in vets, usually PTSD or depression: “The study … was based on the department health records of 289,328 veterans involved in the two wars who used the veterans health system for the first time from April 1, 2002, to April 1, 2008. The researchers found that 37 percent of those people received mental health diagnoses. Of those, the diagnosis for 22 percent was post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, for 17 percent it was depression and for 7 percent it was alcohol abuse.”
Tags: distracted driving, privatization, reports, veterans, West Virginia
