Ouch

Toyota turns abruptly and directly in front of bicyclist me in bicycle lane — bicyclist “me” loses. I knew the Netter drawings prize from the 2004 Medial Blog Awards would come in handy.

Image 1. Showing a drawing of a normal lumbar spine with an x-ray showing an anterior compression fracture of L2.

Image 2. Showing a drawing of a normal L2 and a CT image of L2 showing an anterior fracture.

Medicare Grade D

The Medicare Drug Mess (Editorial) | NYT | 1.22.06

After getting off to a promising start last fall, the new Medicare prescription drug program has stumbled badly in recent weeks, leaving tens of thousands of patients unable to obtain essential medicines.…

The immediate problems…most of the snags occurred in the part that should have been the easiest to execute smoothly - the automatic switchover of more than six million poor people from the Medicaid programs in their home states to the new Medicare drug program.

…

Nobody knows how many people were affected, but officials acknowledge it may be in the tens of thousands. California alone says that some 200,000 of its one million Medicaid patients had trouble getting medications during the switchover, an astonishing error rate.…

Prediction: Medicare Part D will be vastly more expensive then originally conceived and tremendously error–riden (this is just the start).

New Design

Thanks to Charles at sitelounge!

Happy New Years 2006