Recent Stories in Health

In an Atlantic Magazine article--"How American Health Care Killed My Father"--making the rounds right now, a local health care provider gets a mention for its innovative business model and it isn't Group Health:

Qliance Medical Group, for instance, now operates clinics serving some 3,000 patients in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, areas, charging $49 to $79 a month for unlimited primary care, defined expansively.

Last Thursday, September 10, Qliance held its ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new clinic at Kent Station (in Kent, which, for the benefit of our Seattle readers, is here--even farther away than Renton). If nothing else--though there is plenty else--Qliance illustrates the immense costs that the for-profit health insurance model adds to health care. (Qliance's founder Dr. Garrison Bliss claims that about 40 cents of every health care dollar supports the insurance industry.)

For "direct primary care"--same day or next-day appointments for urgent care--clients pay a monthly fee of on average $50-$6...

Cold and flu season is on its way, and as you know Western medicine has pretty much retreated re: treating it. If the vaccine doesn't work, you are S.O.L. Not like the old days, when they'd give you antibiotic and knock it right out. Now it's "fluids and rest." Health care reform can't come soon enough, in my view.

So what about Eastern Medicine? To Ho's Herbs & Massage Center on Jackson!

I didn't have the flu, but my "girlfriend"--invented for the sake of this exercise--did. I walk in. It looks more like a doctor's office than I expected. Rising from the floor, there's a glass case full of plasti-wrapped boxes of herbal remedies. On the wall behind that case, another case bolted to the wall, this one with dozens of drawers. Further back, to the left of the cases, a middle-aged Chinese man with perfect skin sits surrounded by file folders.

"My girlfriend has the flu," I tell him. "Do you have anything for that?"

"How long ago did it start," he asks, though not in as perfect English as that. I wasn't...

With a suspected 2,600 cases of swine flu at Washington State University in Pullman (and no slowdown in students reporting sick), it's no surprise that the University of Washington has reported two suspected cases of H1N1, too. Unofficially, last weekend's PAX attendees have reported over 100 cases, renaming the virus H1Nerd1.

So far, #paxflu sufferers are tweeting what it's worth remembering, despite the size of the outbreak: while it's not pleasant, it's not for most people a particularly terrible flu. If you get sick, stay home and don't spread it. And please don't drag yourself to a large conference or convention.

King County Public Health has announced that a dead crow found in Laurelhurst was infected with the West Nile Virus. It's not the first time, but it is earlier than detected last year, and so there's a longer risk of someone being bitten by a mosquito that fed from an infected bird. Use mosquito repellent if you see skeeters.

So far, West Nile virus is responsible for the deaths of six people across the whole country, out of 156 cases. Most of the time, people who become infected remain symptom-free, but a small proportion develop a fever, aches, and nausea. An even smaller number react severely and develop encephalitis. The CDC has a West Nile fact sheet if you want to know the particulars.

In the meantime, the health department--who hate to say "We told you so"--reminds you that their "program's budget was severely cut back this year due county budget challenges and mosquito testing was eliminated. However, dead crows continue to be tested. The WNV-positive bird reported today is the 35th King County bird...

• T. R. Reid talks at Town Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 8. Tickets are $5 at the door. The Washington Post correspondent and NPR commentator has a new book out, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

T. R. Reid argues that lack of universal health care is primarily a moral question, not an economic one. It's estimated that each year we do not offer universal health care, 20,000 U.S. citizens die who did not have to. To my ears, the debate sounds Abrahamic:

24What if there are fifty uninsured people in the country? Will You really let them fall ill and not spare the lives of the fifty uninsured people? 25Far be it from You to do such a thing–to kill the uninsured with the terminally ill, treating the uninsured and the terminally ill alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

I can't pretend not to be biased here--I've been a proponent of health care reform since reading of Harry S Truman's attempts at reform in the mid-1940...