HEALTH DISPARITIES BLOG

November 11, 2008

links for 2008-11-11

• General Motors Retirees Struggle With Loss of Health Coverage
  As General Motors faces a liquidity crisis many of the company’s retirees are trying to navigate Medicare and plan for their own finances in the wake of the company’s decision to drop its lifetime health coverage for some 100,000 white-collar retirees.
• 8,000 blacks die due to blood pressure gap
  The lives of 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could figure out a way to bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a new study found.
• Taiwan newspaper takes U.S. health care to task.
  Hospitals everywhere in America - public, non-profit institutions as well as private, profit-making ones-routinely charge the uninsured, the people who have no clout, the most. How much more? On average, five times as much, according to K.B. Forbes, a patient-rights advocate who has spent the last three years analyzing and securing reductions in the hospital bills of uninsured working people from California to Florida.