Money Isn't Everything, Even to Doctors

Time Magazine

Many health policy experts, including those who wrote the Affordable Care Act, believe there's only one thing that can get doctors to change their behavior — money. A new study may blow a giant hole in that belief, just in time to save the government millions or even billions of dollars.

"Pay-For-Performance" is the theory that health care wonks believe could bring the U.S. health care system back from the financial brink. Pay for quality; compensate for competency. If we can just reward doctors when their patients stay or get healthy, we can solve a lot of what ails us systemically. Healthier patients are less expensive to care for and place less strain on the medical system. If doctors are incentivized to keep their patients from getting sick (or sicker), staggering amounts of money and time could be saved. At least that's the theory behind some of the most experimental and innovative provisions in the new health reform law. (More on TIME.com: In Rural Areas, There May Be No Doctors to Tend to Your Sick Kid)

Right now, doctors don't get paid this way. For the most part, the government (via Medicare or Medicaid) or private insurance companies pay physicians for each individual task they perform. There are no penalties or rewards if these doctors choose the wrong treatments or if a patient's chronic disease isn't well managed. The more treatments, surgeries, or office visits a doctor performs, the more money he or she makes. [...]

California rabbis bring show of unity

JPost

The diversity of Jewish religious practice was on display when an eclectic group of 37 male and female rabbis visiting from Northern California shuffled into the Bina Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture seminary in grimy south Tel Aviv last Thursday.

Some were affiliated with Chabad Hassidut and sported bushy beards and tallit fringes sticking out from their shirts. Others were Reform and Conservative rabbis wearing little or no visible Jewish garb, and at least one female rabbi was wearing a kippa.

They had agreed to put aside their differences and in a show of crossdenominational solidarity come to Israel for a week-long fact-finding mission. [...]

Bostoner Rebbe zt"l

Jewish Action

A very long and productive life came to an end last December—long not just because the Bostoner Rebbe died at the age of eighty-eight (18 Kislev 5770), but because of what he packed into each day.

Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong

Newsweek

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you. [...]

Students' Emotional Health at 25-Year Low; Girls Especially Hard Hit

ABC News

 new report -- the most comprehensive annual survey of full-time college students at four-year colleges -- concluding that the emotional health of college freshmen has dropped to its lowest level in 25 years.

The survey, "The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010," was conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute and included 200,000 students. The number of freshmen who said their emotional health was "below average" has risen steadily, according to the report. [...]

Egypt kills all Internet activity in attempts to stem protest tide

Haaretz

Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the Internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule, experts said.

Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major Internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the Internet to try and silence dissent. [...]

Seeing others oppressed and not helping is considered being the oppressor

Ibn Ezra (Shemos 22:20): Concerning a ger - When the ger accepts not to worship idols do not upset him in your land just because you have much greater power than he does. Remember that you were once gerim like him. Just as the verse mentions the ger who is helpless, the Torah here also mentions the orphan and the widow who are Jews who are helpless. Furthermore it first says not to upset in the plural grammatical form and then it says if you upset in the singular form. That means whoever sees the orphan or widow being persecuted and doesn’t help them he will also be considered the oppressor.

Ibn Ezra (Shemos 21: 22): If you afflict – The punishment - when one person afflicts another who has no one to protect him – is on everyone [who did not help]. Therefore G d comes after them and in His anger kills all of them….