Health

Common Dreams, July 30 - 59 years ago today, nearly half of American seniors had no hospital insurance. Private insurance companies were reluctant to cover anyone over 65. Even fewer seniors had coverage for non-hospital services like doctor’s visits. Many of the elderly were forced to exhaust their retirement savings to pay for medical care; some fell into poverty because of it. All of that changed with Medicare.

In Medicare’s first year of coverage, poverty decreased by 66% among the senior population. From 1965, when Medicare was enacted, to 1994, life expectancy at age 65 increased nearly three full years. This was no coincidence. Access to Medicare coverage for those who were previously uninsured helped lift seniors out of poverty and extend their lives.

As with Social Security, workers would contribute with each paycheck toward their future Medicare benefits. Upon putting his signature on this new program, a keystone of the Great Society, President Johnson declared, “Every citizen will be able, in their productive years when they are earning, to insure themselves against the ravages of illness in old age.”

Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a second Trump presidency, would gut traditional Medicare by accelerating privatization and repealing drug price negotiation.

Medicare has been improved several times over the decades. In 1972, Americans with disabilities (under 65 years of age) became eligible for Medicare coverage—along with people suffering from chronic kidney disease needing dialysis or transplants. In 2003, prescription drug coverage was added to Medicare (though the program was prohibited from negotiating prices with drugmakers). The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 finally empowered Medicare to negotiate prices with Big Pharma—and lowered seniors’ costs by capping their out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs and insulin.

Nearly 60 years after it was enacted, Medicare is one of the most popular and efficient federal programs. Ninety-four percent of beneficiaries say they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their quality of care. Unlike many other federal programs, Medicare spends less than 2% of its budget on administrative costs.

CNN - The CDC announced a $5 million initiative to offer seasonal flu vaccines to farmworkers to prevent a supercharged flu virus. Public health officials across the US share concerns that a new version of the influenza virus could emerge among livestock workers who are at a higher risk of catching the bird flu virus, which has been circulating in millions of farmed and wild animals. Under the new initiative, the seasonal flu vaccine will not be mandatory for farmworkers but will be brought to local events and to areas where they typically gather. The general public's risk from bird flu remains low, according to the CDC, but there is still a real risk for animals, with outbreaks detected in commercial poultry, backyard flocks and even pets.

Guardian - Wildfire smoke is known to be toxic to the body, but just how toxic is starting to come into focus as new studies emerge. Just this week, a decade-long study involving more than 1 million people in southern California found that exposure to wildfire smoke significantly increases the risk of being diagnosed with dementia by 21%, versus other types of air pollution such as from motor vehicles or factories.

Another recent study, also conducted in California, attributed more than 50,000 premature deaths to wildfire smoke exposure. Smoky skies have been linked to spikes in hospital admissions and ambulance calls for conditions such as asthma, and for people who have cardiovascular issues, the risk of cardiac arrests rises 70% during days with heavy smoke.

Those are just a few examples of how wildfire smoke is dangerous to health. The more research is done, the more we are learning about how different parts of the human body are impacted, says Dr Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director at the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. “We’ve long been concerned,” she says, “but people don’t fully understand this threat, because it’s a new one.”