Why Should We Cover People Who Don’t Take Care of Themselves?

From the 21 March 2012 posting by Joe Flower at The Health Care Blog

One of the most common ideas in the whole healthcare financing discussion is a moral one. Why, people say, should my taxes and my healthcare premiums go to take care of the huge medical problems of people who don’t take care of themselves? As one commenter on THCB put it: “…self inflicted injuries to not be covered at all, ideally. If someone drinks their liver away I don’t think we should all have to buy them a new one. Same for smoking.”

This is a common idea, one that seems logical and right on the surface. But there are four assumptions built into it, all four of which have problems:…..

Read the entire post here

How visualizing health problems through infographics could help solve medical mysteries

In the blog posting, an information specialist designs an infographic to visualizing her own medical history and symptoms related to the auto-immune disease Myasthenia Gravis. She does so in hopes of making the most of my appointment with a new doctor.

The post  includes both her medical history and the infographic that, in her words “charts the progress of my Myasthenia Gravis since I was 13 – not only the hard facts like the medications I was taking at the time, but the way I *felt* during those times and the degree of weakness I was experiencing. Overlaid is the progression of my stomach problems over my lifetime, including the points in time when I took antibiotics.”

Related articles

• When the Patient Designs Infographics (scienceroll.com)
• Infographics Solve Information Overload, Says Visual.ly’s CCO (contently.com)