Kaiser Health News
Readers and Tweeters Are Horrified by Harm Tied to Dental Device
by
Fri, 31 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000
Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.
Teeth-Gnashing History Repeats Itself
In reading about the AGGA (Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance) dental appliance and the associated problems (“This Dental Device Was Sold to Fix Patients' Jaws. Lawsuits Claim It Wrecked Their Teeth,” March 1), I noted in your article no reference to a similar problem with the proplast-teflon product to treat TMJ, or temporomandibular joint disorder, from the 1980s and '90s, which caused equivalent damages. It amazes me that essentially the same story happened again. The proplast-teflon product even resulted in congressional-level investigations. And the product was summarily removed by FDA order throughout the United States.
Thank you for your good investigative work.
— Dr. Abbey Strauss, Boca Raton, Florida
Horrifying story. Dental device sold without undergoing FDA regulation, numerous stories of patients with wrecked jaws and teeth. https://t.co/tCqFk6PFsI via @khnews
— Joseph Ross (@jsross119) March 15, 2023
— Dr. Joseph Ross, New Haven, Connecticut
This problem seems to expand beyond the AGGA device to the Las Vegas Institute's entire methodology. The same thing was promised/done to me with braces by LVI-trained dental professionals. I was in braces for six years, and my teeth have spaces they cannot fill now — all while I'm still paying off my debt and unable to afford additional work.
— Chrystal Wilson, Roanoke, Virginia
It's just embarrassing that this happens here.https://t.co/v1kNXof5VQ
— doug hirsch (@dougjoe) February 28, 2023
— Doug Hirsch, CEO of GoodRx, Santa Monica, California
Slipping Through a Billing Loophole
I help support the type of network that this article references (“Bill of the Month: Surprise-Billing Law Loophole: When ‘Out of Network' Doesn't Quite Mean Out of Network, Feb. 28). I think it is important for KHN to educate people on narrow-network products, which was the product the Laskey family selected for their medical insurance benefits. These products have lower monthly premium costs for people who select into them, like the Laskeys, but reduce their in-network provider options, hence the term “narrow network.”
These narrow networks may carry out educational webinars, attend open-enrollment fairs, and have a website (in addition to the payer's website) so that members are educated about the narrow-network offering. With the adoption of more value-based care in the USA, narrow networks are likely to become more prevalent, and more people will need to understand the insurance products, and their networks.
— David Mayo, Denver
#CDC‘s 2016 guidelines that led to crackdown on #opioid prescribing practices now replaced with new guidelines encouraging physicians to focus on needs of individual patients. But the damage is done. https://t.co/J0eNwVkj5b #chronicpain #painmanagement #opioidcrisis #DEA #FDA
— Greg Slabodkin (@Slabodkin) March 15, 2023
— Greg Slabodkin, Niagara Falls, New York
Chronic Pain Patients' Chronic Rx Hurdles
Saw the article about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines the past few years have scared too many doctors until hardly any prescribe opioids anymore (“New CDC Opioid Guidelines: Too Little, Too Late for Chronic Pain Patients?” March 15).
Just wanted to chime in that I am having the exact same problem. I have chronic pain, arthritis throughout my body, a degenerative disc disorder, and even more documented medical problems. I recently broke my collarbone and was given only a two-day supply of opioid medication for it. And my pain doctor's office doesn't even prescribe me opioids.
I've also been treated horribly in the past when I was on an opioid. And if it weren't for my family doctor's understanding, I would still be living in so much pain that life seemed too hard to live with this much misery. I'm on what they call Tylenol 4, with codeine; it barely holds the pain back, but I still cannot handle cold weather (and I hate the heat) or even doing normal chores around my house without going into such a bad pain state I have to stay in bed. If I were able to get the pain medicine appropriate for my condition, I could actually enjoy things again. But because of the “opioid crisis,” that would make me an addict, by most doctor's opinions. I know the CDC didn't mean to make many chronic pain patients live in misery, but in my experience, that's exactly what has happened. And there's nothing I can do about it.
So I wanted to thank you for the article because I don't think society or the medical community truly understands what the guidelines did to people like those in your article, or like me either. Thank you so much for writing that!
— Michelle Shivpuri, Cedar Hill, Texas
Great to see other journalists finally picking this story up https://t.co/b3BN48vE8o but so many are still enthusiastically repeating myths about pain and opioids
— Maia Szalavitz (@maiasz) March 15, 2023
— Maia Szalavitz, New York City
Cost-Cutting Tools You Can Use
I am a 66-year-old female who had a colonoscopy and polyps removed at a hospital. This was my first screening of this kind, and upon completion I was billed $882 out-of-pocket. Luckily I was listening to your “Bill of the Month” coverage on South Carolina public radio. It educated me of my rights to preventive care under Obamacare. I was able to dispute the bill with success. But I must add here that my health insurance company tried to discourage me from challenging this bill. It made me feel that the bill was correct and that I should feel lucky that it was only that much. I was very disappointed, so I persisted to fill out another dispute in which I quoted KHN and threatened further action. Within a few weeks, my insurer rescinded the bill I had to pay $0. Big thanks to KHN-NPR's “Bill of the Month”!
— Angela Thomas, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
‘The veterinary tranquilizer xylazine – the choice du jour of local drug dealers to cut fentanyl – can lead to necrotic ulcers and leaves street medics and physicians confused about how best to deal with this wave of the opioid crisis' https://t.co/pP1AQUHkmn#Xylazine
— Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai (@gbiondizoccai) February 24, 2023
— Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai, Rome
Warning: Painting a Graphic Picture of Drug Use
I recently came across your Kensington “tranq dope” article (“Postcard from a Philadelphia neighborhood: As Opioids Mixed With Animal Tranquilizers Arrive in Kensington, So Do Alarming Health Challenges,” Feb. 15). I have been in the health care field for 20-plus years and recently married a recovering addict, so it brought back a bad and vivid memory I'd like to share with the community of Kensington — the users, as well as the first responders, and health care providers, and wound care treatment teams who so graciously step in and up to help individuals suffering from xylazine's horrific effects.
My husband, Joshua, who became addicted to opioids after being prescribed painkillers for shoulder surgery 20 years ago, was a previous xylazine user only because it was in just about all of the supposed “heroin” bags he bought. One day he said to me, “Why does it feel like something is crawling under my skin?” After looking at his arms, with big nasty-looking sores on them, I replied, “I have no clue.” Thinking he was just “high” and making it up or just hallucinating, I went back to bed. A few hours later, he woke me saying there were worms or maggots coming out of his arms. So, again, I go into the bathroom with him to see what he was talking about, and sure enough it certainly looked exactly like what he had described. Clearly, he needed to be checked out, but being a stubborn, bullheaded man — along with being labeled, judged, and treated poorly previously when seeking medical attention — he did not seek care. A few days later, he was still pulling these things out of his arms and, finally, I persuaded him to be seen by a doctor. The entire doctor's office couldn't believe what they were looking at, so after going over everything it could have been, we learned that it was, in fact, a parasite. The doctor's best explanation was that the drug Josh had injected must have been contaminated with larvae, and it was producing parasites.
Now let's take a minute and think about this. Hmm. Horse tranquilizer, horseflies, maggots, or worms … whichever you'd like to call them. It makes sense, doesn't it? So just use caution when treating individuals and please watch for any possible parasites that may not be treated properly. My husband was given antibiotics, a steroid, and a cream to treat the problem and is doing fine now, but the critters have left nasty scars on his arms for him to have a daily reminder of, for sure.
“Tranq dope” is so hard to get off of, and the detox and withdrawal symptoms are extremely hard to handle and overcome, my husband says. Also, there's not enough information on how to treat or counteract the symptoms. After being clean for just over a year, he relapsed again and went back to the streets of Philly. He is currently incarcerated at a Montgomery County correctional facility, helping his fellow inmates become aware of how serious and dangerous xylazine really is. Our dream is to someday open a fully functional safe house and outreach program within the Philadelphia area to assist as many individuals as possible and show them a better way of life and help them start their new journey.
— Jill Romanishan, Williamsport, Pennsylvania
I don't know if anyone remembers the drug that Russians were addicted too in the 2000-2010 era. #Krokodil — highly addictive, flesh eating sores which led to amputations, most often: death. Now it's #tranq https://t.co/jCkPJd6xwg
— RiverRatDoc (@RiverRatDoc) March 13, 2023
—D.B. Pritt, Clayton, New York
Shoring Up Coverage Ahead of the Great Unwinding
Millions of Americans could lose Medicaid coverage soon (“Medicaid Health Plans Try to Protect Members — And Profits — During Unwinding,” March 9). This problem could be solved seamlessly by Congress expanding public option health insurance in all states in 2023. Do petition the White House, the entire U.S. Senate, and the entire House of Representatives to expand it in all 50 states to provide health care to millions of Americans still without health care or who are about to lose state Medicaid coverage soon.
— Piotr Sliwka, Manassas Park, Virginia
Medicaid Health Plans Try to Protect Members — And Profits — During Unwinding https://t.co/fv5GyqWXzu via @khnews // Get help from the health plan during Medicaid unwinding. they don't want to lose members or continuity of care either.
— Marcella Maguire, Ph.D. (@Cella65) March 9, 2023
— Marcella Maguire, Philadelphia
Title: Readers and Tweeters Are Horrified by Harm Tied to Dental Device
Sourced From: khn.org/news/article/letters-to-editor-readers-and-tweeters-agga-dental-device-chronic-pain-cdc/
Published Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000
Kaiser Health News
Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,’ and the Gap in Mortality Rates
Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
KFF Health News senior correspondent Samantha Young discussed Medicaid and climate change on KCBS Radio's “On-Demand” podcast on April 29.
- Click here to hear Young on KCBS
- Read Young's “AC, Power Banks, Mini Fridges: Oregon Equips Medicaid Patients for Climate Change“
KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller discussed Medicaid unwinding on WUGA's “The Georgia Health Report” on April 26.
- Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report”
- Read Phil Galewitz' “Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.“
KFF Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez discussed mortality rates in rural America on The Daily Yonder's “The Yonder Report” on April 24.
- Click here to hear Rodriguez on “The Yonder Report”
- Read Rodriguez' “City-Country Mortality Gap Widens Amid Persistent Holes in Rural Health Care Access”
——————————
Title: Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,' and the Gap in Mortality Rates
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/journalists-delve-into-climate-change-medicaid-unwinding-and-the-gap-in-mortality-rates/
Published Date: Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/oh-dear-baby-gear-why-are-the-manuals-so-unclear/
Kaiser Health News
Oh, Dear! Baby Gear! Why Are the Manuals So Unclear?
Darius Tahir
Fri, 03 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Since becoming a father a few months ago, I've been nursing a grudge against something tiny, seemingly inconsequential, and often discarded: instructional manuals. Parenthood requires a lot of gadgetry to maintain a kid's health and welfare. Those gadgets require puzzling over booklets, decoding inscrutable pictographs, and wondering whether warnings can be safely ignored or are actually disclosing a hazard.
To give an example, my daughter, typically a cooing little marsupial, quickly discovered babyhood's superpower: Infants emerge from the womb with talon-strength fingernails. She wasn't afraid to use them, against either her parents or herself. So we purchased a pistachio-green, hand-held mani-pedi device.
That was the easy part. The difficulty came when we consulted the manual, a palm-sized, two-page document.
The wandlike tool is topped with a whirring disc. One can apparently adjust the speed of its rotation using a sliding toggle on the wand. But the product manual offered confusing advice: “Please do not use round center position grinding,” it said. Instead, “Please use the outer circle position to grinding.” It also proclaimed, “Stay away from children.” In finer print, the manual revealed the potential combination of kids and the device's smaller parts was the reason for concern.
One would hope for more clarity about a doodad that could inadvertently cause pain.
Later, I noticed another warning: “If you do not use this product for a long time, please remove the battery.” Was it dangerous? Or simply an unclear and unhelpful yet innocuous heads-up? We didn't know what to do with this information.
We now notice shoddy instructions everywhere.
One baby carrier insert told us to use the product for infants with “adequate” head, neck, and torso control — a vague phrase. (The manufacturer declined to comment.)
Another manual, this one online and for a car seat — a device that's supposed to protect your kid — informed readers with words and images that a model baby was “properly positioned” relative to the top of the headrest “structure” when more than one inch from the top. Just pixels away, the same model, slumped further down, was deemed improperly positioned: “The headrest should not be more than 1” from the top of her head,” it said, in tension with its earlier instructions. Which was it, more than one inch or not? So we fiddle and hope for the best.
I acknowledge this sounds like new-parent paranoia. But we're not entirely crazy: Manuals are important, and ones for baby products “are notoriously difficult to write,” Paul Ballard, the managing director of 3di Information Solutions, a technical writing firm, told me.
Deborah Girasek, a professor of social and behavior sciences at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, told me that for decades, for the young and middle-aged alike, unintentional injury has been the leading cause of death. That's drownings, fires, suffocation, car crashes. The USU is a federal service academy training medical students destined for the armed services or other parts of the government.
Some of these deaths are caused by lack of effective communication — that is, the failure of instruction about how to avoid injury.
And these problems stretch from cheap devices to the most sophisticated products of research and development.
It's a shortcoming that's prompted several regulatory agencies charged with keeping Americans healthy, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to prod companies into providing more helpful instructions.
By some lights, they've had success. NHTSA, for example, has employees who actually read manuals. The agency says about three-quarters of car seats' manuals rate four or five stars out of five, up from 38% in 2008. Then again, our car seat's has a five-star rating. But it turns out the agency doesn't evaluate online material.
Medical product manuals sometimes don't fare too well either. Raj Ratwani, director of MedStar Health's Human Factors program, told me that, for a class he teaches to nurses and doctors, he prompted students to evaluate the instructions for covid-19 tests. The results were poor. One time, instructions detailed two swabs. The kit had only one.
Technical writers I spoke with identified this kind of mistake as a symptom of cost cutting. Maybe a company creates one manual meant to cover a range of products. Maybe it puts together the manual at the last moment. Maybe it farms out the task to marketers, who don't necessarily think about how manuals need to evolve as the products do.
For some of these cost-cutting tactics, “the motivation for doing it can be cynical,” Ballard said.
Who knows.
Some corners of the technical writing world are gloomy. People worry their jobs aren't secure, that they're going to be replaced by someone overseas or artificial intelligence. Indeed, multiple people I spoke with said they'd heard about generative AI experiments in this area.
Even before AI has had its effect, the job market has weighed in. According to the federal government, the number of technical writers fell by a third from 2001, its recent peak, to 2023.
One solution for people like us — frustrated by inscrutable instructions — is to turn to another uncharted world: social media. YouTube, for instance, has helped us figure out a lot of the baby gadgets we have acquired. But those videos also are part of a wild West, where creators offer helpful tips on baby products then refer us to their other productions (read: ads) touting things like weight loss services. Everyone's got to make a living, of course; but I'd rather they not make a buck off viewers' postpartum anxiety.
It reminds me of an old insight that became a digital-age cliché: Information wants to be free. Everyone forgets the second half: Information also wants to be expensive. It's cheap to share information once produced, but producing that information is costly — and a process that can't easily or cheaply be replaced. Someone must pay. Instruction manuals are just another example.
——————————
By: Darius Tahir
Title: Oh, Dear! Baby Gear! Why Are the Manuals So Unclear?
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/baby-product-instruction-manuals-confusing-technical-writing/
Published Date: Fri, 03 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Kaiser Health News
California Floats Extending Health Insurance Subsidies to All Adult Immigrants
Jasmine Aguilera, El Tímpano
Fri, 03 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Marisol Pantoja Toribio found a lump in her breast in early January. Uninsured and living in California without legal status and without her family, the usually happy-go-lucky 43-year-old quickly realized how limited her options were.
“I said, ‘What am I going to do?'” she said in Spanish, quickly getting emotional. She immediately worried she might have cancer. “I went back and forth — I have [cancer], I don't have it, I have it, I don't have it.” And if she was sick, she added, she wouldn't be able to work or pay her rent. Without health insurance, Pantoja Toribio couldn't afford to find out if she had a serious condition.
Beginning this year, Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, expanded to include immigrants lacking legal residency, timing that could have worked out perfectly for Pantoja Toribio, who has lived in the Bay Area city of Brentwood for three years. But her application for Medi-Cal was quickly rejected: As a farmworker earning $16 an hour, her annual income of roughly $24,000 was too high to qualify for the program.
California is the first state to expand Medicaid to all qualifying adults regardless of immigration status, a move celebrated by health advocates and political leaders across the state. But many immigrants without permanent legal status, especially those who live in parts of California where the cost of living is highest, earn slightly too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal.
The state is footing the bill for the Medi-Cal expansion, but federal law bars those it calls “undocumented” from receiving insurance subsidies or other benefits from the Affordable Care Act, leaving many employed but without viable health insurance options.
Now, the same health advocates who fought for the Medi-Cal expansion say the next step in achieving health equity is expanding Covered California, the state's ACA marketplace, to all immigrant adults by passing AB 4.
“There are people in this state who work and are the backbone of so many sectors of our economy and contribute their labor and even taxes … but they are locked out of our social safety net,” said Sarah Dar, policy director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, one of two organizations sponsoring the bill, dubbed #Health4All.
To qualify for Medi-Cal, an individual cannot earn more than 138% of the federal poverty level, which currently amounts to nearly $21,000 a year for a single person. A family of three would need to earn less than $35,632 a year.
For people above those thresholds, the Covered California marketplace offers various health plans, often with federal and state subsidies, yielding premiums as low as $10 a month. The hope is to create what advocates call a “mirror marketplace” on the Covered California website so that immigrants regardless of status can be offered the same health plans that would be subsidized only by the state.
Despite a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, the bill might struggle to pass, with the state facing a projected budget deficit for next year of anywhere from $38 billion to $73 billion. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders announced a $17 billion package to start reducing the gap, but significant spending cuts appear inevitable.
It's not clear how much it would cost to extend Covered California to all immigrants, according to Assembly member Joaquin Arambula, the Fresno Democrat who introduced the bill.
The immigrant policy center estimates that setting up the marketplace would cost at least $15 million. If the bill passes, sponsors would then need to secure funding for the subsidies, which could run into the billions of dollars annually.
“It is a tough time to be asking for new expenditures,” Dar said. “The mirror marketplace startup cost is a relatively very low number. So we're hopeful that it's still within the realm of possibility.”
Arambula said he's optimistic the state will continue to lead in improving access to health care for immigrants who lack legal residency.
“I believe we will continue to stand up, as we are working to make this a California for all,” he said.
The bill passed the Assembly last July on a 64-9 vote and now awaits action by the Senate Appropriations Committee, Arambula's office said.
An estimated 520,000 people in California would qualify for a Covered California plan if not for their lack of legal status, according to the labor research center at the University of California-Berkeley. Pantoja Toribio, who emigrated alone from Mexico after leaving an abusive relationship, said she was lucky. She learned about alternative health care options when she made her weekly visit to a food pantry at Hijas del Campo, a Contra Costa County farmworker advocacy organization, where they told her she might qualify for a plan for low-income people through Kaiser Permanente.
Pantoja Toribio applied just before open enrollment closed at the end of January. Through the plan, she learned that the lump in her breast was not cancerous.
“God heard me,” she said. “Thank God.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
——————————
By: Jasmine Aguilera, El Tímpano
Title: California Floats Extending Health Insurance Subsidies to All Adult Immigrants
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/california-legislation-medicaid-subsidies-all-adult-immigrants/
Published Date: Fri, 03 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/bird-flu-is-bad-for-poultry-and-dairy-cows-its-not-a-dire-threat-for-most-of-us-yet/
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