One could write an entire book on what this chart shows us. – Max Roser
Tag: health care
Sponsored by the Healthcare Affinity & Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
At a time when the nation is looking to the healthcare industry for leadership and service, the pandemic has led to a significant impact on the U.S. healthcare job market. Historically, the healthcare industry has been relatively immune from recessions. However, as services have been cut, income streams have been lost. Join us as our panel of speakers discuss the economic impacts of the pandemic on the healthcare industry. This event will be presented on Zoom.
September 16, 2020 at 03:00PM - September 16, 2020 at 04:00PM

We all make thousands of choices each day. But making even trivial decisions can sap our energy and cause anxiety. Dr Laurie Santos examines why our society wrongly prioritises choice over happiness, and meets a woman who junked her wardrobe in a bid to improve her life.
There’s some discussion of limiting one’s wardrobe choices as a way of freeing one’s life up a bit. They didn’t mention the oft-heard example of Einstein wearing the same thing every day, but did catch the possibly better example of Obama cycling through the small handful of choices in his wardrobe to limit the yet another decision of many he had to make each day.
“My daughter has to eat,” one mother said. “And if it’s choosing between that or paying a doctor bill, I’m going to choose her.”
Generous Thinking: Sustainability, Solidarity, and the Common Good from CNI Vimeo Video Channel on Vimeo.
See cni.org/events/membership-meetings/past-meetings/spring-2019/plenary-sessions-s19#opening for more information.
Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Spring 2019 Membership Meeting
April 8-9, 2019
St. Louis, MO
cni.org/mm/spring-2019/
Joseph explores the extent to which discourses about community suggest an antidote to or escape from capitalism’s depredations, while distracting us from the supplementary role that community actually serves with respect to capital, filling its gaps and smoothing over its rifts in ways that permit it to function untrammeled. The alternative presented by community allows the specter of socialism, or genuine state support for the needs of the public, to be dismissed. This relationship becomes particularly clear in Joseph’s discussion of the role of non-profit organizations — entities highly likely to participate in and benefit from the idealized discourse of community — which often fill needs left behind by a retreating state, allowing that retreat to go unchallenged.
— Kathleen Fitzpatrick in Community, Privatization, Efficiency
Also cross reference: Strategy and Solidarity
From the video at timecode [22:05]:
…raises the key question of what it is we mean when we talk about community?
As Miranda Joseph argues in Against the Romance of Community, the concept is often invoked as a place holder for something that exists outside the dominant economic and institutional structures of contemporary life. A set of estensibly organic felt relationships that harken back to a mythical pre-modern moment in which people lived and worked in direct connection with one another without the mediating forces of capitalism.
Now community is in this sense, in Benedict Anderson’s sense, an imagined relationship, and even an imaginary one. As its invocation is designed to yoke together bodies whose existence as a group is largely constructed. It’s a concept often used both idealistically and as a form of discipline.
A claim of unity that smoothes over and thus suppresses internal difference and disagreement. And as Joseph points out, the notion of community is often deployed as if the relationships that it describes could provide an antidote to or an escape from the problems created by contemporary political and economic life.
But this suggestion, serves to distract us, she says, from the supplementary role that community, in fact, actually serves with respect to capitalism. Sort of filling its gaps and smoothing over its flaws in ways that permit it to function without real opposition. So we call upon the community to support projects that the dominant institutions of the mainstream economy will not. And this is how we end up with social network-based fundraising campaigns to support people facing major health crises rather than demanding universal health care, and elementary school bake sales rather than full funding for education.
So community becomes, in this sense, an alibi for the creeping privatization of what should be social responsibilities.
Some interesting thought here with respect to economics, community, the commons, and education. While a large piece of the talk is about higher education, there are definitely some things that can be learned and used with respect to social media, and particularly the IndieWeb movement. I’d recommend everyone take a peek at it and think about how we can better deploy and give credit to some of our shared resources.
Amid state attacks on Roe, Warren unveiled a comprehensive strategy for expanding reproductive rights.
🎧 The Myth of Meritocracy | On the Media | WNYC Studios
"Meritocracy" was coined as satire; the messaging for and against Medicare for All; and Dutch economic historian Rutger Bregman.
A college admissions scandal has highlighted what people refer to as "the myth of meritocracy." But actually, meritocracy itself is a myth. This week, On the Media looks at the satirical origins of the word and what they tell us about why the US embraces it. Plus, the messaging for and against Medicare for All, as well as a historical look at why we don't have universal healthcare. And economic historian and Tucker Carlson antagonist Rutger Bregman.
1. John Patrick Leary [@JohnPatLeary], professor at Wayne State University, on the history of the satirical origins of the word "meritocracy". Listen.
2. Paul Waldman [@paulwaldman1] of The Washington Post on the messaging war over Medicare for All and what the media is getting wrong about the proposal. Listen.
3. Jill Quadagno of [@floridastate] on the history of why the U.S. has shunned universal healthcare. Listen.
4. Rutger Bregman [@rcbregman] on the myths about wealth and who creates it. Listen.
🎧 The Too-Good-To-Be-True Cancer Cure | On the Media | WNYC Studios
Despite steadily declining rates of cancer deaths over the past two decades, cancer remains responsible for 1 in every 6 deaths worldwide. It’s a scourge. So when, this week, an Israeli company called Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies captured the news cycle with promises of a complete cure for cancer within the year, the story caught fire.
The company’s technology is called “MuTaTo” — that's multi-target toxin. And, to judge from the news media this week, it seems vetted, verified and veering us all toward a cancer-free future. Reports began in the Jerusalem Post, but quickly took off, making their way into various Murdoch-owned publications like FOX and the New York Post and landing in local news outlets around the country and the globe.
A couple days into the fanfare, the skeptics started coming out: for one thing, as oncologist David Gorski points out in his blog “Respectful Insolence,” the claims are based on experiments with mice: no human trials have yet started. For another, they haven’t been sufficiently peer reviewed. In fact, the company won’t share its research, claiming it can’t afford the expense. The too-good-to-be-true story appears to be just that, built on PR puffery. But who can resist a good cancer cure?
With Mutato in mind, for this week’s podcast extra, we revisit our Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Health News edition, with Gary Schwitzer, publisher & founder of HealthNewsReview.org.
🎧 The Daily: Trump Wanted to Scrap Obamacare. His Party Didn’t. | New York Times
The latest scuffle over health care shows a sea change in the Republican stance heading into the 2020 elections.
👓 The Death of an Adjunct | The Atlantic
Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.
🎧 Economic Ripples: Hospital Closure Hurts A Town’s Ability To Attract Retirees | NPR
When a rural community loses its hospital, health care becomes harder to come by in an instant. But a hospital closure also shocks a small town's economy. It shuts down one of its largest employers. It scares off heavy industry that needs an emergency room nearby. And in one Tennessee town, a lost hospital means lost hope of attracting more retirees.
👓 Zuckerberg San Francisco General’s aggressive tactics leave patients with big bills | Vox
I spent a year writing about ER bills. Zuckerberg San Francisco General has the most surprising billing practices I’ve seen.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: A Conversation With a Freshman Democrat | New York Times
We spoke with Abigail Spanberger, a recently elected congresswoman from Virginia, about her first days in the Capitol and what it means to be a Democrat today.
Last week on “The Daily,” we looked at the campaign of a candidate who embodied the Democratic strategy for winning the House. This week, she arrived in Washington.
Abigail Spanberger a former C.I.A. officer, was elected as a Democrat in Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District. Listen to last week’s episode of “The Daily” about how the Democrats flipped the House, with a spotlight on Ms. Spanberger’s victory in a reliably conservative district.
The incoming group of House Democrats is the most diverse, most female freshman class in history. Members of the group also have major differences in ideology, which may present a challenge for Democratic leaders trying to unify their new House majority.
👓 How Japan’s prime minister plans to cope with daunting demography | The Economist
The reforms he has in mind are not bold enough
👓 Private IVF clinics urged to stop charging for expensive add-ons | Society | The Guardian
Fertility experts criticise use of optional extras that do not increase chance of pregnancy