Tuesday Tidbits

Despite a lovely case of asthmatic bronchitis, here I am, your trusty news gatherer, ready to take on another day:

Vice President Biden will be presiding over a deficit reduction panel to negotiate a plan, but as of right now, no Republicans plan to attend. Meanwhile, analysis of Rep Ryan's GOP 2012 budget shows ... a lot of unclarity. Although he says it repeals the health reform law, apparently it only repeals the parts the GOP doesn't like. For example, the GOP decried cuts to Medicare under health reform (which weren't really cuts), but now they've incorporated them -- and want to go further.

Since the next big fight -- which somehow will involve health reform, Medicare and Medicaid even if they all seem totally irrelevant -- will be raising the debt ceiling. So I thought a good place to start would be what is the debt ceiling and why it's a huge deal. There's already a threat of downgrading US debt issued yesterday by Standard & Poor's. Just the threat sent stock prices tumbling.

Organ donors have a pre-existing condition for insurance purposes. Yup -- that's right -- give away an organ and you can't get health insurance. Nice.

A new RAND study shows that high deductible plans don't discourage people from getting the care they need -- although I have to tell you, not only is this wrong anecdotally, but among the 1513 people who took our chronic illness survey, there were a lot of people skipping medical care, regardless of the amount of their deductible.

Patients with Do Not Resuscitate orders are more likely to die after surgery.

There are new guidelines for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The idea is to diagnose early. It does appear that certain other conditions -- mostly vascular -- does contribute to Alzheimer's.

There's a short supply of a leukemia drug -- scary. We also need to do better with palliative care at the end of life.

CVS pays $17.5 million to settle allegation that they charged Medicaid patients in Florida and elsewhere too much.

Font size doesn't help you learn, but font type does. Interesting read.

And to my Jewish friends, happy Pesach. Have a great day. Jennifer