What can be done about health care?

If you don't understand health care, then maybe you should see somebody who is sick.

Like Kimberly Green.

She's had breast cancer for more than three years. Her treatment costs $6,000 a month. Without it, she said, "I would die."

Myself, Kimberly, some fellow bloggers and health practitioners got together a few weeks ago to talk to her, and to talk about her.

But we also talked about a health care system that's broken. Tens of millions of people are without health insurance, all lacking what she's got that's kept her alive.

As much as we wanted to know about Kimberly, we acted as though we were going to solve this health-care problem ourselves, and we hoped to solve it within a 90-minute span. We didn't get there, but at least we had a healthy dialogue that - if the Obama administration is listening - produced some ideas for finally getting efforts to pass health care reform off the dime.

Click on the below photo to get a glimpse of our Healthcare Reform Blogger Roundtable in New York City, and learn about how Kimberly's work with the Green Family Foundation that has emboldened her to be aware of her environment, and to not take life for granted.

Then, listen to what we have to say (I'm the one sitting against the wall with a tie).


NOTE: The Green Family Foundation has a Facebook page that can be found here.

Give her health insurance, or give her...

When it comes to health care, Kimberly Green doesn't get it.

Oh, don't think for a minute she doesn't know anything about sickness. She's had breast cancer for more than three years. She's had highs and lows, but she knows that wellness can only last for so long when you have stage 4 cancer.

Green - like much of the country - could be one health crisis away from financial ruin. What she doesn't get is why so many people just don't understand.

Her treatment costs $6,000 a month. Without it, she said, "I would die."

Green shakes her head when thinks about it. Tens of millions of people without health insurance, all lacking what she's got that's kept her alive.

Now, as the nation debates how to finally deliver health care to those who need it, Green isn't afraid to use herself - and her words - as a vehicle to convey a message that, she believes, much of the country still has a hard time understanding.

Give them treatment, she says. Or they will die.

"There are a lot of things that can help people, but these things should be available to everybody," Green said.

Green's family has understood this for a while. They have a foundation that's dedicated to improving global health and elevating socioeconomic conditions in impoverished countries.

The Green Family Foundation, a private, non-profit organization, has worked with the Clinton Global Initiative in benefiting Haiti. Just recently, the foundation committed more than $280,000 to improving villages and restoring the country's musical heritage. The foundation also provided a $10 million gift to Florida International University - including a state match - to fund a community medicine program.

Green, speaking at the foundation's Healthcare Reform Blogger Roundtable on Thursday, said her family's work has emboldened her to be aware of her environment, and to not take life for granted. She has made a number of trips to Haiti, appearing with former President Clinton in photos and seeing the worst that poverty can bring.

There, she once saw a woman whose breast was very enlarged. She knew it was breast cancer, but she asked one of the doctors: What will happen to that woman?

"It will be cut off," she said, recalling what the doctor told her. "She will die."

This is a life without health insurance, she realized. And it was the kind of image that inspired her - after her mother was diagnosed - to get a mammogram. Her cancer was diagnosed soon after, and she underwent treatments. She sorted through options until she found what worked best for her.

But when she thinks of the health care in the United States, she thinks of that woman. Costs are rising. Drugs are becoming less accessible. She's worried about how bad things can get. She wonders if we're not so far away from facing the same consequences.

In the United States, at least, many people like Green have choice. But many do not. How long?

"I don't know why it has to be this way," she said.

NOTE: The Green Family Foundation has a Facebook page that can be found here.

Bringing changes to the mind

Glenn Close, in a film directed by Ron Howard, has marked the launch of the "Bring Change 2 Mind" campaign, a nationwide effort to raise awareness about the toll of the stigma associated with mental illness in our communities.

Mental health professionals have partnered with Close and "Bring Change to Mind" to support their work against stigma, and to bring to the public the latest research on effective treatments for mental illness.

To usher in the launch of the campaign, Close has appeared on the following shows to discuss her involvement, and provide more details on how you can get involved: ABC's Good Morning America; ABC's The View; and MSNBC's Dr. Nancy Show.

More information is available here: http://bringchange2mind.org/index.php.

Hope isn't a dangerous thing

Every time I hear of more job losses, or I see more reports of a failing economy, I think back to when I was a kid, and I had dreams of being a best-selling book author by the age of 23. Or I was going to make enough money to buy the Mets and turn them into the Yankees, and spend my senior years in a box by the dugout, with my feet up on the orange Shea Stadium railing, admiring my World Series rings as they glistened in the Queens sunshine.

I was going to make enough money and give it to my brother, the scientist, so he could find a cure for my mother's obsessive behavior. I was going to buy a big house and have round-the-clock nursing care that would give her the relief and the medication she needed. And she would go along with it, of course, because this was only a dream.

Or maybe I was going to be president and run in the 2004 election, as an independent. I was going to get elected as the youngest president ever and solve everybody's problems, because I was independent.

I was going do it without the influence of money and greed, and I was going to resist the John-Edwards-like impulses of narcissism. I was going to run a country based on the same principles that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote about in either the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence.

I could have that dream because, I knew, as an American, I lived in a country where power is shared, not consolidated.

I knew that as an American, I was lucky, and good enough to be born in a country that didn't have poverty and disease like they have poverty and disease in Africa. I knew I could get a job, and I'd have an opportunity to live a life that was something close to my dreams, even if I didn't get everything that I wanted.

But with every bad thing coming out of Washington, and every little nasty political attack I hear on the radio or I see on television, and every bit of talk about credit and jobs drying up, I wonder if everything I hoped for was just that: a dream.

I wonder if I'll ever have anything close to not only what I not wanted, but what I expected. I always expected big things for myself, and I believed all the things my guidance counselors and my parents said about me. But when I look at my profession, and I see newspapers vaporizing, I sometimes wonder if it's a dream that's going to waste.

I have to stop myself, and remind myself that America, yes, is a land of dreams. But it's more a land of hope. I'm 42, and I could still live some or all of my dreams. Without hope, however, I never would have survived.

I never would been able to deal with the struggles I had early on, when I worked for The Delaware State News and a ring of reporters who were jealous of my salary conspired to get me fired. I never would have sought help when I needed it, and turned to a food pantry in 1990 because I couldn't afford to buy anything more than a 79-cent taco at Taco Bell for dinner.

I never would have maintained the friendships I've had, because I've always believed in the people I trust. Even when they've driven me crazy, I always knew there was good in them, and even if they did something wrong, their intentions were right.

I never would have been able to run five miles in 33 minutes and 26 seconds, as I did last week, despite being 42 and long past the prime of my athletic life.

I never would have raised the family I've raised, with an utterly tolerant, open-minded and beautiful wife who has been my saving grace. For that, I am not only hopeful. I'm thankful.

I'd like to think that, if this were 1989 again, and I had the opportunity to look into the future, I'd say I had a life worth living. I didn't know this then, but I know it now: I'll always have the strength and desire to live through the struggles, because I've done it before. As long I'm healthy - not just in body, but in spirit - I'll do it again.

Twenty years ago, on the day I graduated from Rutgers University, I started my first job. I piled my clothes in my back seat, rolled down the windows of my Dodge Dart and drove from New Brunswick to South Brunswick, N.J., with the hot sun rays shooting through the front windshield. I had no air conditioner, so I couldn't stop sweating. I had no FM radio so I couldn't really listen to music.

"Don't worry about it," I thought to myself. "It won't always be like this."

But a song kept repeating in my head, and its meaning was magnified with every pang of nausea I felt in my gut as I felt anxious about a career not yet started. I felt anxious about a newspaper industry that was taking it on the chin, just like it's taking it on the chin now.

Twenty years later, the song never really left, and every now and then, I still hear the strings of the acoustic guitar at the song's opening with every bit of bad news not just about the newspaper industry, but also America.

It was that John Mellencamp song, "Pink Houses," and there was a line in there that seemed to say everything about my life then. More importantly, it says something about our lives now.

Well theres a young man in a t-shirt
Listening to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got a greasy hair, greasy smile
He says: Lord, this must be my destination
'Cuz they told me, when I was younger
"Boy, youre gonna be president"
But just like everyting else, those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

"Ain't that America" he says. Ain't that America, for you and me.

I love that song, but not because it's a song of failed dreams. Behind every lament, I believe, is a feeling of hope.

I believe that Mellencamp saw his song as a message. He believed that lives could be turned around, and not left to die. He saw the farms diseappearing in the Midwest during the early 1980s, and he hoped that people would hear his song, and come to their aid. And they did.

Every time I hear a cry of panic about America, I hope it's not political posturing. I hope it's about hope, and bringing attention to the problems that exist in this country, a nation that's established and strong but young enough to evolve and improve.

I think of The Shawshank Redemption, a movie about inmates at a prison who felt institutionalized by their lives. I remember the scene when the character "Red," played by Morgan Freedman, told his friend, Andy, that hope is a dangerous thing. It could drive a man insane, he said.

Andy, played by Tim Robbins, later broke out of jail and essentially cleared his name. He wrote Red a letter, which Red read when he, too, was able to leave the notorious prison.

"Remember Red," he wrote. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. "

Fear and loathing of the flu

As I've tried to put the finishing touches on my book proposal, I couldn't find anything to write about.

A'vast ye swine! Now there is.

To paraphrase FDR, sometimes it's the fear of the disease that's more damaging than the disease itself. The fear-of-pandemic syndrome is always a media sensation, no matter what the cost.

Here's some facts on swine flu, courtesy of Dr. Geoffrey W. Rutledge of wellsphere.com:

There is quite a buzz about the Swine Flu outbreak that has so far caused 1,995 hospitalizations and an estimated 149 deaths in Mexico, especially after the US department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the swine flu outbreak had reached "phase 4", just one step away from a worldwide pandemic.

The swine flu is caused by the influenza A (subtype H1N1) virus that normally causes respiratory infections in pigs. This virus is not the same as the previously identified human form of influenza A subtype H1N1, and it is not expected that this year's influenza vaccine, which does protect against the human H1N1 flu will provide good protection against the swine flu.

So the concern is that the illnesses and deaths that occurred in Mexico could represent the beginning of a serious influenza outbreak. Of greatest concern is the possibility of a repeat of the famous influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed about 50 million people in the worst global epidemic in human history. That pandemic of "Spanish flu" (an avian variant of influenza A H1N1) killed more people than died during World War I, and more than died during the four years of the "Black Death" or bubonic plague, from 1347-1351. But, don’t go building an underground bunker just yet…

The data provide some hopeful news regarding this outbreak. So far, unlike the swine flu cases in Mexico, all the U.S. cases of swine flu have been less severe and have not threatened the lives of any of those affected. The second piece of hopeful news is that we are at the end of the natural influenza season, so the seasonal factors that lead to enhanced transmission of the virus are not present. It's hard to predict these events, but I'm quite hopeful that the outbreak will not turn into a major pandemic within the U.S.

Here are some resources that you may find helpful if you would like to learn about the swine flu virus and the potential for a widening outbreak of influenza in the U.S.

- A great starting point for information about swine flu is the WellPage on this topic, which lists the articles from the HealthBlogger network, and also shows valuable links in the Trusted Web Resources and News sections: http://www.wellsphere.com/wellpage/swine-flu

- HealthCentral has created a special page on the Swine flu at http://www.healthcentral.com/cold-flu/swine-flu.html

- Daily updates of progress of the outbreak are issued by the CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/

- You can find a comprehensive and understandable summary of the virus causing this illness on the World health Organization website: http://www.who.int/csr/swine_flu/swine_flu_faq.pdf
Note that in this document, the question "Where have human cases occurred" is not fully answered, because it leaves out several countries such as Mexico, Canada, England, and New Zealand, where confirmed cases have occurred.

- One thing that does help restrict the spread of the infection is treating close contacts of infected people with the right anti-viral medications (the CDC defines "close contact" as coming within 6 feet of a person with confirmed swine flu). The CDC recommendations for who should be given preventive treatment (prophylaxis) are at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/recommendations.htm
and the actual treatment dosages are at http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/antivirals/dosagetable.htm#table

- A great resource to help understand the patterns of influenza outbreaks in the U.S., and to see where we are in the annual flu season cycle, is the Google flu trend application, at
http:// www.google.org/flutrends/. This shows that there is no evidence yet of a widening pandemic in the U.S.

Even the best media can't avoid treating mental illness like a horror show

Even The Associated Press isn't immune to promoting stigma.

Here's a story about a person who's accused of killing his therapist. Count the number of mental health stereotypes that the clever reporter and editor managed to weave into the text.

The point is: Can we find another way of describing people with mental illness without resorting to adjectives and verbs that are best reserved for a horror movie?

Here's the story (stereotypes are in bold):

A lawyer for a mental patient accused of hacking a Manhattan psychotherapist to death with a meat cleaver said Tuesday that his client will offer an insanity defense at his trial.

Defense lawyer Bryan Konoski said in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that a psychiatrist he hired to examine murder suspect David Tarloff, 40, said he has "very strong grounds" for a psychiatric defense (above photo: Tarloff).

Konoski's court papers say he will offer evidence of Tarloff's "lack of criminal responsibility by reason of mental disease or defect." They also say Tarloff suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, depression, intrusive delusional thoughts of God and Satan, belief he is the Messiah and other mental disorders.

Tarloff, who told police he has been in mental institutions at least 20 times, is charged with first- and second-degree murder in the death of Kathryn Faughey, 56, in her Upper East Side office on Feb. 12, 2008.

Tarloff is also charged with attempted murder and first-degree assault in the cleaver attack on Dr. Kent Shinbach, 70, who was hurt when he tried to help Faughey. Shinbach, whose office was near Faughey's, was Tarloff's therapist.

Konoski said "the evidence is clear that he (Tarloff) did it, but the reasons he did it, what was behind it, are so crazy that we believe we have a very strong insanity defense."

"He was having visual and auditory hallucinations, communications with God telling him how to act," Konoski said. "He believed through prayer that God had approved what he was going to do at Dr. Shinbach's office to save his mother."

The lawyer said Tarloff, who is being held in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital, was examined there by his psychiatrist for eight to 10 hours on Feb. 27 and four to five hours on March 28.

Here's the definition of mental, when it's used in the above context:

Slang - Emotionally upset; crazed: "got mental when he saw the dent in his new car."
Offensive Slang - Mentally or psychologically disturbed.

So, what's mental?

Are people who take psychotropic medicine "crazed?" Are people who go see psychotherapists or seek treatment at a facility "disturbed?"

Personally, the only thing I ever like to "hack" is any story that compares mentally ill behavior to Frankenstein.

Dude, just chill... image isn't everything

Back when he had Bon Jovi hair, Andre Agassi used to appear in Canon camera ads and make millions of television viewers cringe by telling them: "Image.... is everything."

It was one of those forgettable pop-culture slogans that you hoped would have the life span of mosquito. But, dammit, there he was, every night for what seemed like years, exposing his God-awful Jersey hair in between innings of a baseball game or in the middle of an episode of the Simpsons. "Image.... is everything," he'd say. "Image is everything." It was like some kind of twisted Bohemian chant that was as intellectually bankrupt as a Lionel Richie song.

"Aaaarrgh!" you'd scream, though not necessarily in public.

Now retired, and bald, we thought we were rid of him and his corny words forever. Gone for good, Andre. A successful tennis career, yes. But that slogan...... somewhere buried in the trash heap of 1980s pop culture history, underneath Lionel Richie, Falco and "Baby-on-Board" signs.

Alas, it's back - the slogan, that is - but only in spirit. For, in my little corner of the world, the mere mention of the word "image" has been, at times, too much to handle. I'm attending grad school at Columbia University, and my fellow New Media students are pretty stressed out because we're working on an issue called "Image."

This week, as a result, image has been everything. It has consumed us. We are reminded of it while we sleep (sleep?) and eat. We telegraph it through telephone calls and emails. We type stories that we're convinced have a connection to "image." But, perhaps, the connection is not quite there. Yet, in our heads is that Agassian chant: "Image... is everything." "Image.... is everything."

The cringe-feeling has returned. But, this time, it's not caused by shame or embarrassment. Rather, it's the creation of tension that's as thick as smog. "Aaarggh" they're saying.

I'm reminded of another 1980s icon: Jeff Spicoli, the surfer-dude from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." To me, a guy wearing a flashy red cruise-ship shirt that's hanging wide-open - while he's sitting in a classroom with a pizza on his desk, sassing his teacher - was much cooler than a then-underachieving tennis player wearing a Miami Vice suit jacket and Ray-Ban shades.

Spicoli had a one-word solution for every problem - well, he had other solutions, too - that could prove to be useful advice for every one of us once we discover the computers that are supposed to create a new media landscape have more glitches than than rodeo clowns:

Chill.

Just chill.

The ability to chill is inside us. But it's locked up behind a wall of tension that has stunted our creativity and slowed our potential to imagine "Image."

We are a class of high-achieving, high-I.Q., high-SAT-scoring people. Virtually every one in this class has performed work that is the envy of journalism schools - and perhaps good enough to rival anything produced by the national news media. The "Image" issue is going to kick ass.

Yet, some of the work produced for the "Image" issue shows - at this point, at least - there has been a need for more imagination and confidence and less tension, pain, suffering and feelings of "Aaaargh."

Just chill.

How do you chill?

Back when I used to surf (poorly), we discovered ways of chilling. We didn't think hard. In fact, we never really ever thought hard about anything. But we discovered methods that were simple enough to follow, and effective enough to rival popular solutions produced by intense sessions of psychotherapy:

1. Work hard, yeah, but, you know, have a beer. Have two. OK, if beer's not your thing, have a glass of wine. OK, fine, make it a shot of Jack Daniels. But, please, chill.

2. Watch an episode of "House." Tape it, too, or put it on TiVo, because, with House, you've gotta be quick. Watch it a second time so you can pay close attention to every little obnoxious remark House makes. Once you process each little snide statement, you'll laugh your ass off.

3. While you're at it, watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Yeah, I know. You've seen it 20 times. Get the 25th anniversary edition, however, and watch the outtakes. Before they produced this work of art, they were a mess. But they got through it because, well, there was a lot of chilling going on (at times, they accomplished this through artificial means, but that's not the point).

4. Read that earlier paragraph about "kicking ass." Read it again. Know it. Learn it. Love it.

5. Use the style guide as a rule book, yes. But use it as a guide, too. Remember that each story should have a voice - get to know these voices. Enjoy these voices. Go out for a cup of coffee with the people who produce these voices. If you chill, they'll chill. Then you'll find more voices and, from there, a theme. Then you'll feel the Zen, and you'll find your nut graph that answers the question: What is this story about?

6. If chanting is your thing, as a way of psyching yourself up, forget Andre and consider the words of another American cultural icon, Bill Murray:

"It just doesn't matter."
"It just doesn't matter."
"It just doesn't matter."