Health Wonk Review’s Recess Edition and news from the blogosphere

August 6th, 2009 by Julie Ferguson

Congress may be on vacation but the dedicated health policy bloggers are certainly on the case so you should face no shortage of wonkery. Jaan Sidorov has posted the August Recess Edition of Health Wonk Review at Disease Management Care Blog – well worth your perusal.
And as long as we’re on the topic of health care, kudos to the folks at Kaiser Family Foundation who have put together an interactive tool that allows for side-by-side comparisons of two or more healthcare reform proposals across a number of key characteristics and plan components. It will be regularly updated to reflect changes in the proposals and to incorporate major new proposals as they are announced.
Other news from the blogosphere and beyond
OSHA – President Obama has nominated David Michaels as Assistant Secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor. David Michaels, PhD, MPH, is an epidemiologist and is currently Research Professor at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. In addition to his biography in the release, read more about him in his biography at George Washington University. The folks at OSHA Underground have more and this nominee is also welcome news to The Pump Handle gang as evidenced by the comments in the announcement post.
In more OSHA news, Heidi at The Facility Blog posts about OSHA’s new national emphasis program (NEP) on recordkeeping. The NEP was prompted after congressional hearings last year which raised the issue of under-reporting. The program will institute a policy that prompts recordkeeping inspections at employers’ establishments with low incidence rates in historically high rate industries and will also incorporate inspections of a sample of construction firms. See Heidi’s post for more details on the program.
Pharma – Freshly back from his vacation in the Tanzanian bush, Joe Paduda offers his take on the workers comp implications of the Administration’s drug deal.
Lean claims handling – Roberto Ceniceros has made lots of good posts over at Comp Time this week. Read about how the manufacturing trend to streamlined processing is surfacing in insurance as “lean” claims handling.
Firefighters – August 17 to 21 is National Firefighter Health Week. Despite the dangers that they face on the job every day, the real threat to their health is heart disease – nearly half of all firefighter deaths are caused by heart attacks. The National Volunteer Fire Council sponsors a site with resources and programs designed to encourage first responders to learn their risk factors, commit to making healthy lifestyle changes, and keep the momentum going all year.
NY construction training scam – a new law in New York City requires 10 hours of training for all workers hired at high-rise buildings begun after July 1. The New York Daily news reports that fake 30-hour construction training cards are surfacing. Apparently, three companies in New York and one in Nevada have been busted for issuing these bogus cards and a few dozen other companies are under investigation.
Lighter sideConsumer Insurance Blog posts an amusing video of clever ads from Bangkok Insurance which do a good job illustrating the concept of probability.

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