The pharmaceutical industry is facing hundreds of lawsuits around the country from state and local officials, who want the industry to help pay to tackle the opioid epidemic.
Hey guys, I hope you are all having a happy long weekend. Something about long weekends make my creative juices really flow so yesterday I put the finishing touches on my Finding Vegan Meals Summer Challenge and rolled it out to my FV Meals community. Basically, it is a collection of some of my favorite summer-approved recipes. Smoothies, veggie burgers, salads and more. Loads of recipe photos. Plus a fun challenge card to inspire you to load up on plant-based foods this summer. It's just a tiny piece of content to help inspire some summertime cooking! I hope it helps and I hope you can try these recipes.
If you have already purchased Finding Vegan Meals, you can download the full challenge book in the private Facebook group.
But today I'm giving everyone a free sample with...
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For seven years, Missouri has been the only state in the country without a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP). PDMPs are designed to help identify abuse of controlled substances like opioids and to spot potential drug interactions.
Missouri doesn’t have a PDMP because one State Senator blocked the bill year after year by claiming the government might use the data to prevent people from buying guns. The Senator hit his term limit and there was expectation this year that the bill would finally pass, ending Missouri’s ignominious distinction as the lone holdout. Alas, a new group of six Republican Senators took up the mantle of their departed colleague and filibustered the bill again citing privacy and gun rights fears.
The lack of a PDMP is a problem for Missouri but also for surrounding states, which face blindspots in their systems as a result of not being able to share data with Missouri. A variety of local jurisdictions in Missouri have moved forward and are cooperating with other states, but the gaps are serious and have potentially lethal consequences.
The state ranks as the third biggest problem area in the country (only Washington, DC and Michigan are worse) for drug use so it’s not as though everything is working out just great.
Missouri is known as the “Show-Me” State, an expression that conveys the “stalwart, conservative, noncredulous character of Missourians,” according to the Missouri Secretary of State.
Most people credit the birth of “Show-Me” to a speech by a US Congressman in 1899. “I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
But there’s another, less flattering origin story, referring to scabs from Missouri who replaced striking Colorado miners around the same time. “That man is from Missouri. You’ll have to show him.”
The second story seems about right for the current situation as the state continues to display willful ignorance about the opioid epidemic. I could include something similar about the attitude toward guns, but on that issue Missouri is sadly more representative of the country as a whole.
Though a new study shows that eating unprocessed food is healthier, home-cooked meals require resources that food experts take for granted, such as money and time, the authors of a new book argue.
This Sunny Day Tofu Sandwich is packed with veggies like avocado, arugula and tomato. Pickles and a secret sauce make things extra flavorful. This tofu-stuffed vegan sandwich is protein packed and perfect on a sunny day! Serve on fluffy ciabatta or your favorite sandwich bread. I love this as a lunchtime sandwich...Read more »
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Scientists may have uncovered a primary method through which cancer cells exist undetected in an organism and received more than $1 million to investigate the potential for novel therapeutics that target and destroy cells in a specific state of tumor dormancy.
A new poll from NPR, Harvard and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gives a glimpse into rural life in America today, finding that many people living in rural communities live on the edge financially.
This tasty Vegan Tofu Spread is surprisingly reminiscent of egg salad... Delicious on toasts, in sandwiches, or as part of this nutritious and delectable wrap, with paper thin cucumber and radishes!
Back when I was a teenager, still living with my parents, my mom used to buy this thing called tofu spread... As much as I hated to admit it — I mean seriously, TOFU? This was NOT the kind of stuff that I would eat back then. That was way too healthy for little rebel teenager me! —I remember sort of liking it. And munching on it while no one was looking!
Years later, not long after I'd started blogging actually, I tried to recreate that spread from memory. My first attempt was so bad, I ended up chucking the whole batch and starting over. But then I tried again, and I'd really nailed it that time. The second batch tasted exactly how I remembered it. Even better, I think. And, it was made using fresh ingredients only, to boot.
And now, even more years later, I still make and love this same tofu spread. It's crazy versatile, makes a great alternative to egg salad in sandwiches, but can also be used as a dip for vegetables, or you could also spread it on toasts for a yummy breakfast, or on whole grain crackers for a quick and healthy snack.
Or, if you want to try something really refreshing (and fairly different), use it in this delicious wrap, with paper thin slices of cucumber and radishes; This is a summertime classic from my childhood that I'm hoping you'll love just as much as I do.
My main job is president of Health Business Group, a boutique healthcare strategy consulting firm I founded in 2003. As a sideline, I write the Health Business Blog, where I provide a behind the scenes look at the business of healthcare, featuring my spin on healthcare topics in the news, interviews with entrepreneurs, and policy prescriptions.
The blog is turning 14 years old this month! Continuing a tradition I established with birthdays one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen I have picked out a favorite post from each month. Thanks for continuing to read the blog!
Tufts Health Plan CEO Tom Croswell is a veteran of the health plan world. I sat down with him to discuss value based care, collaboration, diversity and how Tufts tries to set itself apart in a crowded market. Tufts is best known for serving Massachusetts but is also expanding into neighboring states. It has a joint venture in New Hampshire and had just announced its entry into Connecticut in partnership with Hartford HealthCare.
Kaiser Health News is a non-profit news service that does a great job of exploring healthcare policy topics. Still I was impressed that one article (How a drugmaker turned the abortion pill into a rare-disease profit machine) managed to directly and indirectly raise at least 10 important policy topics.
The news was full of stories about merger discussions between Partners HealthCare and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. No one denied the reports, so we can assume there was some truth to the rumors. But why would these organizations contemplate a merger and how likely would it be to happen? I compared it to a scene from a Cheech & Chong movie.
A month after Harvard was talking about merging with Partners, the company’s CEO was out. It had something to do with his behavior… Both the Globe and Herald wanted to hear what I had to say about departed CEO, Eric Schultz.
Nurse triage lines have gone through three phases of evolution. In phase 1 they were implemented to ‘check the box’ for member education, phase 2 brought “demand management” to keep patients out of the emergency room, and now in phase 3 health plans are creating a gateway to innovative programs and services.
I discussed these topics with a leading company in the field.
We don’t normally think of Senator John McCain as a healthcare leader, and yet he played a significant role over the years in various policy matters. CareCentrix CEO, John Driscoll and I paid tribute in a short edition of #CareTalk.
Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) claim to keep drug costs under control, but their convoluted business models and tactics don’t always result in the best deal for employers. Reference based drug pricing is an interesting alternative approach. It’s used for drug cost control in other parts of the world and within the US for things like elective surgery.
“Consumer directed health plans” were all the rage in the mid 2000s. The big idea was that if patients had ‘skin in the game’ in the form of greater financial participation in the cost of their care, they would use their well honed shopping skills to find the best deals and thereby drive costs down and value up. Employers embraced the idea, since it could reduce their costs and keep employees happy.
Healthcare was on the minds of mid-term voters in November. Candidates emphasized healthcare in their campaigns and voters in at least six states had an opportunity to weigh in on healthcare via ballot questions.
Voters were being asked to decide some fairly technical questions, including whether dialysis center profits should be capped in California, whether hospitals should have to maintain specific nurse staffing ratios in Massachusetts, and whether Medicaid eligibility should be expanded or current expansions extended in Idaho, Utah, Nebraska and Montana.
In this end-of-2018 edition of #Caretalk, Carecentrix CEO John Driscoll and I banter about Amazon, drug pricing, immigration, home health, Russia, the ACA and more. I wanted to call this episode “If You Want to Destroy my Healthcare” but was told the Weezer reference was too obscure.
The term ‘Medicare for All’ is being bandied about as the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination gets underway. Declared and potential candidates are warming to the idea. It’s easy to see why.
However, I’d much rather see attention turn to continued expansion of Medicaid, specifically by offering people the opportunity to ‘buy-in’ to Medicaid coverage.
Biotech company Agenus is launching a “digital security offering” that will let people invest directly in a single biotech product, rather than the whole company. Jeff Ramson, founder and CEO of strategic communications firm PCG Advisory Group, became fascinated by the concept and reached out to me to discuss it, even though he is not involved in the offering. (And neither am I.)
Interoperability has a been a buzzword in healthcare for about a decade, but sometimes it doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten that far. In this podcast, Rhapsody’s EVP of Product & Strategy, Drew Ivan and I discuss interoperability: its past, present and future.
Here’s what we covered:
0:20 What is interoperability anyway?
2:50 Why do we hear about interoperability so much in healthcare? Is it an issues in other industries?
5:11 How does interoperability in the US compare to the situation elsewhere?
6:51 Does interoperability matter to patients?
9:20 Has interoperability failed in the past? What new models are being tried?
11:54 What’s the business model for interoperability?
13:42 Are there any downsides? Does interoperability create any new problems?
14:54 How will interoperability evolve in the coming year?
Spicy Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries that are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and all kinds of tasty! Oh, and did I say, all kinds of good for you? Yeah, that too!
If you've ever tried to make oven baked sweet potato fries from scratch, then you're no stranger to the fact that it can be really hard to get those sweet potatoes to crisp up when baking them in the oven, as opposed to throwing them, a handful at a time, into a bath of blazing hot oil. Hard, but not impossible...
While it may be tough to beat the deep fryer, there is definitely a way to obtain decently crispy and positively yummy oven baked sweet potato fries. Granted, it requires a bit of time, effort and planning ahead, but it's totally worth it, I swear!
All you need to do is follow a few basic rules. And once you get the hang of it, there really is nothing no it, you'll see.
Cultured Cashew Yogurt has a super thick, creamy and velvety texture coupled with a deliciously nutty, tangy flavor. The best part is, it's so stupid easy to make at home, you'll never want to go for store-bought ever again.
Since going plant based, I think yogurt is the one thing that I miss the most. I tend to use it a lot in cooking and baking, but especially love adding a little dollop of the creamy, tangy stuff to my morning cereal. I've tried a couple of store-bought brands, but wasn't really a fan of their taste or texture, or list of ingredients, for that matter. Most of them contain guar gum or some other kinds of gum, and my taste buds really don't care for those at all. Plus, well, store-bought non-dairy yogurt also tends to cost an arm and a leg.
So I decided to try and make my own at home. I thought for sure that making yogurt would be super complicated, with all kinds of technical and scientific operations, but really, I was way off: making cultured yogurt at home couldn't be easier. All you need basically are 3 ingredients: cashews, water, and probiotics. Yes, the kind of probiotics that you take in the morning to keep your gut flora all happy happy!
And you don't need no fancy equipment or anything, either. Well, in all fairness, a high-speed blender is really mandatory if you're gonna make your yogurt really super smooth and velvety, but if you don't have one, you could still get very decent results using a regular blender.
This cashew yogurt is so thick, so rich, so creamy and velvety, it almost feels like I'm eating crème fraîche... If you've ever had crème fraîche, you know exactly what I'm talking about!
For the time being, I've only experienced with cashews, but I know that other nuts and even coconut milk can also be used to make cultured yogurt at home. I'll be sure to experiment with those, too.
All I know is I won't be buying commercial yogurt again anytime soon...
Researchers have found that higher levels of aneuploidy lead to much greater lethality among prostate cancer patients. This suggest a mechanism for how some prostate cancers become lethal, and could be used to alert doctors which patients might need to be treated more aggressively.
Those Trail Mix Chocolate Clusters are perfect for those occasions when you crave a little something sweet but still want to keep things on the healthy side... Be careful, though: they are extremely more-ish, so just one cluster might not cut it!
I've always had a bit of a sweet tooth... or maybe, a lot of a sweet tooth. Especially in the evening, for some reason. Usually not long after supper, I'll get a some kind of craving for a little bit of sweetness... Not for a big flat out, sit-yourself-down-with-fork-and-plate dessert, like a big slice of cake or any other such decadence... More like, just a little nibble of something sweet. I'll usually reach for a few pitted dates and a square or two of dark chocolate, but sometimes, my tummy demands that I provide something a little bit more, erm, elaborate.
That's when I'll whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, or make quick and easy bite-size treats such as these trail mix chocolate clusters. Just one of those usually does the trick and keeps my tummy all smiley and happy. Little does he know that I'm actually feeding him all kinds of good things like nuts and dried fruits, hemp hearts and coconut and whole grain cereal... Nah! The only thing he cares about is the chocolate, I think. Oh, and the fact that these taste absolutely insanely delicious.
A little too much even; cuz trust me, those chocolate clusters are so crazy yummy, it's really hard to stop at just one... you'll see!
This Vegan Buddha Bowl has smoky maple flavors and so much love from rim to rim. The dressing is a cashew-maple-lemon with a hint of garlic. Grab a few plant-based ingredients and have this delicious meal on your table in under thirty minutes! Plus, find out the ingredient I totally forgot...Read more »
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This Wild Blueberry Pumpkin Seed Protein Smoothie has been a favorite of mine for a while now. Simple ingredients and loads of flavor, sweetness, a hint of salt, fiber and healthy fats and even plant-based protein from pumpkin seeds. Here is my recipe and specifics on which pumpkin seeds to use..Read more »
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These cheesy, vegan Spinach Enchiladas are so simple to pull together for dinner - or even a make-ahead meal. Tender spinach is stuffed into tortillas and marinated in homemade enchilada sauce. You decide how cheesy of a mood you are in...Read more »
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Steve Inskeep talks to Nick Florko of the news site Stat, which covers health and medicine, about the White House requiring drugmakers to display the cost of drugs when they advertise on TV.
The latest edition of #CareTalk is out. CareCentrix CEO, John Driscoll and I explore the departure of FDA Director Scott Gottlieb and other pressing topics.
Here’s what we covered:
(0:28) Scott Gottlieb is out at FDA. Are you sad to see him go?
(2:00) Home health spending is projected to grow faster than any other category of healthcare over the coming years. Is that good or bad?
(4:00) Insulin prices are spiking and both Democrats and Republicans are up in arms. What’s happening?
(5:53) Lyft is talking about the social determinants of health. What?!
(8:47) What do you think about FDA approving ketamine nasal spray as a treatment for depression?
(9:10) What did we learn about healthcare from Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony?
Easter is one of my favorite food seasons because of all the lovely pastel, spring colors that pop up. And recently, it has become so easy to find Natural Food Colorings for all your Easter recipes. So today, I want to share a few of my faves with you and show you just how gorgeous they are!... Read more »
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This Speedy Peanut Seitan Rice Bowl can be whipped up quickly for lunch or dinner. The protein-packed seitan pairs perfectly with rich, creamy peanut sauce. Some simple rice and scallions, maybe some sriracha and a sliced avocado and done. This is another fast, easy and flavorful - plant-based - recipe for you....Read more »
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This Easy Blueberry Sauce is the perfect topping for waffles, pancakes, a yogurt parfait, oatmeal or basically anything you can think of. It can be made in just a few minutes using fresh or frozen berries, and has the perfect thick, yet (not too thick) consistency. You can even try this using strawberries, raspberries and more, but blueberries are my fave. I usually use frozen blueberries, because frozen berries taste just as good as fresh and pack all the nutrients - and they are super convenient and usually a bit cheaper than fresh, but fresh berries could work too. Get my easy + speedy recipe!...Read more »
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Pasta is an easy go-to meal that can pack a lot of flavor and nutrition. I whipped up this Rustic White Bean Tomato Sauce and served it over top veggie spirals for a fast and super yummy lunch today. This recipe is easy and simple. Serve this sauce over top any variety of pasta. You could even serve it with rice or add a few more veggies and eat it like chili, with a chunk of crusty bread on the side. I also share a few fun ways you can tweak this recipe... Read more »
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