Canada under attack

Canada's health care system came under attack in Las Vegas this afternoon at the Health Care Globalization Summit.

Sally Pipes, a Canadian researcher and writer who has long been a critic of health care in Canada, said the system is expensive and leads to long waiting lists.

"We have rationed care. We are told that at a certain age there are some procedures you can't get," she told the conference. She relayed the story of her aging mother, who was told she was too old to get an MRI. "This is not the kind of care Americans want," she said.

She was also sharply critical of the health care plans of the two Democratic presidential candidates, saying both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are proposing plans for universal care that will one day lead to Canadian-style single-payer (ie, government) medicine.

More Reasons to Quit Smoking

Above and beyond being the obvious cause of heart disease, stroke and lung cancer, the reasons for quitting cigarette smoking are becoming even clearer. There are many health conditions that have been directly linked over the past few years to cigarette smoking. If you smoke or have someone in your family who does, you should make sure that they're aware of these other important reasons to quit - among the most prominent being that it will be more difficult to get a life insurance quote or policy. Reading this may just be the kick in the pants they need to stop harming themselves and those around them.

America's Voyeurism and America's Escape from Self

America; let's stop laughing and instead begin healing!

America still laughs and points to people with mental health challenges. Its 2011, America. It's not Salem Massachusetts in the 1600's.

Lindsay Lohan, Miguel Cabrera, Charlie Sheen are all seen as public spectacles. Ironically, these are people we can publicly laugh at and divert attention from ourselves from.

These are "celebrities." Our friends, family and co workers are ones we privately point and laugh each and every day in our life. The laughs and lack of support around what mental illness is in our country becomes the hell and shame spiral of the person being laughed at. The laughs become the excuse for us to turn away from the responsibility of taking care of our own lives. That is voyeurism as a national pandemic. We are too busy laughing and pointing.

U.S. Flunks Women’s Health

Kids might dread that report card that comes every winter, but a nationwide report card on women’s health doesn’t make officials nearly as anxious as it should.

According to the National Women’s Law Center’s latest report card on state and national health policy, no state got a “satisfactory” (S) grade on the group’s selected health measures, and only Vermont and Massachussetts scored an S-minus. The many “F” states were concentrated in the Southeast, such as Mississippi. The nation as a whole got a big “U” (unsatisfactory), with passing marks in only three key areas:

the percentage of women age 40 and older across the country getting mammograms regularly, the percentage of women visiting the dentist annually and the percentage of women age 50 and older who receive screenings for colorectal cancer.

Why Have Abortion Rates Stopped Dropping?

Abortion rates have generally fallen since the 1980s for a variety of reasons including greater access to contraception and the availability of over-the-counter emergency contraception. But in recent years, according to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates have stalled, raising questions about whether pregnant women have access to a full range of reproductive options and choice.

The study reports:

Nationwide, the number of abortions peaked in 1990, at 1.61 million, and dropped 25 percent, to 1.21 million, by 2005. Similarly, the abortion rate declined 29 percent over the same period, from 27.4 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 to 19.4 per 1,000.