Monday’s New York Times contains an op-ed written coauthored by Peter Bach, a highly respected oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He and his co-author explain the hospital’s decision not to include the newly approved drug… Continue Reading
Vivian Ho, James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics, joined KUHF radio host Andrew Schneider this week to discuss how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect U.S. businesses and the economy. Among other issues, Ho explained how the ACA — which the Supreme Court upheld last week — aims to control the rising cost of health care. Continue Reading
Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding key provisions of the Affordable Care Act — the health care reform law — is “the most dramatic legislation to influence health care in America since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s,” said Vivian Ho, James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics. “The court’s decision today means well over 30 million people who are uninsured today will get access to affordable health insurance and therefore health care.”
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Biomedicine is prematurely going gray. Despite soaring funds for biomedical research over the past few decades, new and young investigators are finding it increasingly difficult to begin academic careers in this field. From 1980 to 2010, the average age of a new investigator funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. government agency that funds the majority of biomedical research, rose from 36 to 42. Some of this increase can be attributed to the length of current graduate school programs. However, the majority is a result of the significant amount of time that young scientists spend as postdoctoral researchers or in nontenured research and lecturer positions — jobs that lack the independence or prestige of tenure track positions. Scientists take these jobs because they are available, and because of the lack of better-paying, longer-term positions in their specialties. Continue Reading
Earlier this week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the new federal health care reform law’s requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance is unconstitutional In the judge’s opinion, mandating health insurance exceeds the regulatory authority granted to Congress… Continue Reading
When many people think back to August 2005, they will remember it as the time when New Orleans was battered by Hurricane Katrina. For me, it is the month that my 42-year-old brother Michael died unexpectedly from a dissecting aortic… Continue Reading
As the cost of treating cancer in the United States continues to rise — colon cancer surgery alone accounts for more than $1 billion in Medicare costs each year — Vivian Ho, Baker Institute Chair in Health Economics, and Thomas… Continue Reading