Keyword: health care

Are We Over-Medicalized?

Picture: pipereport.com Video Everyday thousands of people are diagnosed with pre-conditions. We hear about pre-hypertension, pre-diabetes, pre-cancer and many more. In this engaging talk, Reuters health editor, Ivan Oransky warns that we are suffering from preposterous pre-conditions diagnosed within a system that thrives on over-medicalizing treatments. Most doctors are in a fee-for-service system. They are basically incentivized to do more tests, perform more procedures and prescribe medication. Pharmaceutical...

The Scourge of the IMF

Picture: Olwan Robert Weissman - Tuberculosis, a treatable disease, kills 1.7 million people a year worldwide. TB incidence, according to the World Health Organization seems to be correlated to broad social factors, like access to clean water and sanitation, HIV incidence and national health expenditures. A just published study in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine investigates the role of a different possible explanatory factor: the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The researchers’ study focuses...