For the second article, I think the whole idea of herd immunity is really interesting. Especially in the US, I think we have the mindset of thinking of our health as a very personal thing. I think we sometimes get carried away with the idea of individual decisions, for example the resistance against policies making fast food healthier (people should make their own eating decisions). If your health is very likely to impact the health of others, and very rapidly, I think it makes a lot of sense for that decision to be influenced.

I think Kat's response to the first article was super interesting- I'm really curious to learn more about the concept of combining health care and health insurance providers. Also, I was wondering whether somehow less frequent mammograms could end up being more effective since that would mean less of a cost for women and something more women would be willing to invest in?

Week Three Readings

Wow, both of these articles were very though provoking. I found the HPV Vaccination article almost a little disturbing, in a sense. The vaccination is an effort made to increase the health of the women in our country, it is a proactive measure. When parents opt-out for their children, not only are their children not giving consent, but the parents are taking away the child's right to health and protection. Reading this article reminded me of some recent cases of child deaths caused by "prayer healing" in Oregon. Religion is a great thing, but if it starts putting children at risk of their health, some major moral and ethical evaluations must be taken. It is great that they make the vaccine mandatory in elementary school, when the most children attend school. The second article confused me a little. I don't understand why the guidelines recommend women get fewer mammograms. It's very interesting that these proactive measures are not the issues that are "popular" per se, but it is the treatment that get the most public attention. It it these preventative, proactive measures that need more funding so that we can save more money from not having to treat as many sick people.

Reading the first article really made me think about the importance of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka the Health Reform Law), and why it is important that it is not repealed (regardless of politics). The health reform law set in place regulations that patients with health insurance do not have to pay for certain preventive measures, especially mammograms. Coupled with increased health insurance coverage, that means that more women will have access to free mammograms once all of the health reform laws take effect.

I agree that the debate needs to be more than just economics, but I think the economics argument is meant for the people who ignore the pathos appeal. For those people, it is important for them to know that public funding being spent on mammograms is actually going to end up saving them money by not needing as much post-diagnosis care.

I think one definite problem is the Medicare rates. In all parts of women's health care, and all of health care, Medicare consistently pays below operating costs for many procedures. When people realize the importance of these procedures, I think we should increase the amount that we are willing to pay for them, and we should not have to place doctors in the position of choosing between bankruptcy and preventing breast cancer.

Going with what Kat said, I think it is important to have a structure where health insurance companies actually benefit from preventing disease among their patients. It just seems so obvious, but it rarely happens. Instead patients and their health insurers are left on opposite sides, struggling over bills and what procedures should be covered.

About the mammogram age guidelines, the idea that women over 40 should not get annual mammograms is absurd. There are thousands of women over age 40 who get breast cancer each year. When my mom was diagnosed, she was 42/3, and according to this guideline, she should not have gotten a mammogram more than every other year. The entire reason that her cancer was found early was because she did get regular mammograms, twice a year actually.

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On the topic of HPV vaccines, I believe that all pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults, both male and female, should receive HPV vaccines. However, until pharmaceutical companies are able to develop a vaccine without the side-effects on the scale of Gardasil, I don't think it should be mandatory. It would be like forcing the side-effects on people. I think it is more of a moral responsibility that people who are sexually active should be vaccinated.

Personally, I think the debate should be more about the safety of requiring vaccinations rather than increasing sexual activity. Analogy: (?) People who commonly wear seatbelts in a car aren't more likely to stop wearing a seatbelt if they know that emergency surgery has improved. It is more that people who are conditioned to be safe will continue to be safe.

the first link i posted briefly discusses the impact of the health reform on preventive procedure coverage

the second link is a very recent article about the guidelines, etc.

One of the things that stood out to me in the first article was the focus on HPV as a women's health issue (like breast cancer), as it was used as a justification for the vaccination to be compulsory for girls of middle school age. (However, the problem is compounded by so many interest groups, from the government to special interest organizations, that the support for it is varied.) What I found interesting, in addition to the economic concerns that other people have pointed out, is the argument made about the transmissibility of HPV: chiefly the rationale that because it isn't "casually transmissible", it requires less protection against it. This brought me back to the idea of HPV as solely a women's issue; if others (like family members and the close community surrounding an individual) are impacted by a woman's diagnosis, isn't this much more than just a women's health concern?

Regarding the mammogram article, despite whatever basis the new guidelines have to make their decisions, I feel that the new recommendations made seem to fall short of the adequate protection and assurance that women deserve. It is also counterintuitive in a sense because it is better to be prepared early on than to face the consequences much later.

Week 3 Readings

The first article was a little vague, in that it didn't make a clear point. I wasn't sure why less mammograms were needed, and I wasn't sure if the insurance didn't cover health insurance, or if these "at-risk" women simply didn't have insurance at all. However, it is a concern that policy-makers are trying to save money on such a serious disease as breast cancer. The second article was much more coherent. I think it is great that they are trying to protect as many young women as possible. However, the article did not address the health risks tied to the vaccine, which lead many parents to be wary about administering it to their daughters (but there are health risks tied to every vaccine, I suppose).

3rd week reading

I have to say that the mandatory vaccination is an issue that i'm really curious about. Personnaly, I believe that mandatory vaccination is not good for everyone. Although the writer say that there are some unproven theory alleging connections between vaccines and illness, I think vaccination can do harm to human body. At least, incidents that vaccinations causing death happened before. Whether vaccination is safe enough still needs to be proved. As a result, I feel everyone has the right to decide whether he or she wants to be vaccinated and take the risk of any bad results. I think that despite some of the vaccines that had been proved safe to body and are crucial to prevent diseases, especially world-wide epidemic, other vaccines which are not must-needed should not be listed as mandatory vaccinations . I mean the state government should cover those vaccinations in medical programs so that prople who are willing to be vaccinates do not need to worry about the cost but people can decide by themselves.
From the reading, I think the public health policy has to reach a balanced point that taking factors such as social impact, employment, economics and public health into consideration. Also, the coverage of health insurance can largely affect the population that receive the treatment. In terms of making the guideline, those people need to seriously consider the social impacts because any changes may cause higher unemployment rate in the future, which can result in fewer people having health insurance.

Readings for the 20th

After reading the articles I agree with a lot of what has already been said. It is very frustrating when money becomes more important than health, but it seems to happen more regularly then the public is made aware of. It makes several processes even more confusing and perhaps more stressful than they already are. One point that stood out to me was "the new guidelines recommend that women in their 40's no longer have annual mammograms... women ages 50 t0 74 have them only every other year."?? this seems kind of ridiculous to me, how would someone catch a sign of cancer only every other year?

The debate on Gardasil was a little more familiar, I think both sides have valid arguments and I can only speak for myself. My mother has always been a bit suspicious of too much medicine and treatment and she has passed this on to me, I try to stay away from taking unnecessary medicines and so forth, however, she was definitely in support of getting my Gardasil shots, because of the evidence of their effectiveness.

As Issra said, I agree that the first article on mammograms seem to be primarily concerned with the economics of the related issue. Evidently, the implications on less prevention exist, and I think this was a very serious issue that could have been taken up more. I was rather confused by why such a policy was passed in the first place. The last quote seems to suggest that law makers recommended less mammograms in order to save money in the health care system, which is a very depressing reason. I would have appreciated knowing more about that aspect.

The second article was clearer in that I can see both sides of the issue. However, I thought most of the reasons against not having compulsive vaccination to be rather ridiculous. That said, I have heard before that the vaccine can cause some individuals to pass out. Depending on what's around them, they might hit and hurt themselves. But I still think it's a "risk" worth taking?

I thought both readings were really interesting. After reading the first article about mammograms, I recalled what I once learned about Kaiser Permanente. Someone, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was told that Kaiser Permanente is unique in that it provides both health care and health insurance to its clients. In other words, those who go to a Kaiser hospital are insured by Kaiser. What’s interesting is that this combination makes Kaiser Permanente more invested in preventative care, because if their patients develop, say breast cancer, it would be way more expensive for them (Kaiser insurance) to pay for breast cancer treatment, than it would be for routine mammograms. Could combining healthcare and health insurance providers be a way to solve some of the financial issues surrounding mammograms?

I really liked how the second article about HPV vaccines highlighted bigger ethical issues surrounding vaccination of children. And I agree with Jessica that the religious opposition to mandatory HPV vaccination is pretty bizarre.

Something that struck me most about the first reading was that the main priority of the article was economics and finances rather than about women’s health and the decline of mammograms. For instance, the article mentioned more about the financial impacts for companies of breast cancer screening devices than about the health implications or reasons behind the decline in mammograms and increasing age of women who get them.

I found the article about HPV vaccines to be interesting in that the vaccines were still resisted even though they were beneficial to one’s health. In particular, the article illustrates the stigma around getting vaccines or getting treated since HPV is spread primarily among sexually active people and injection drug users. The article also made me curious to think about other methods to improve women’s health without such polarizing and extreme attempts such as mandated vaccines.

The mammogram article made me angry because mammograms are so easy to get (as in you can just go in and get one and there isn't any preparation needed), saves so many lives, and is being cut back. The second article made me less mad, mostly because I've heard both sides of the argument for/against HPV vaccines before. If I was a mother, getting my daughter the vaccine would be a no-brainer, if she can avoid cancer and/or STIs in the future because of this vaccine I'm going to get it for her. The whole issue of the vaccine contradicting abstinence (promoting promiscuity), is ludicrous to me. However, I think the argument that our children are receiving too many vaccines is interesting. I think this is something a lot of people in Europe feel. I learned this from experience because when I was living in London and got a H1N1 flu shot (via an american military base), a lot of people kind of rolled their eyes and said 'you americans are always so cautious'. But again, I think vaccines save lives so it would take a lot to convince me against them.