Recommended health care is so vague as to be meaningless. In a 2006 paper in Pediatrics, Belamarich et al. documented the verbal advice directives that the American Academy of Pediatrics has determined should be a part of recommended care. There were 192 directives. They ranged from reminding parents that they should not have firearms in their home to asking about marital discord and telling parents, who are presumably so much stupider, that teenagers are not adults and have likely not mastered the "complex task" of driving.

Health care is expensive already. Costs will explode when everyone is required to pay for and sit through such tedious lectures as a part of getting "recommended care."

• posted by Linda Gorman
• October 11, 2007 @ 3:34 pm
• Permalink

No doubt: this study will be used to increase children's dependency on government-provided health care. Nevertheless, it is a significant technical achievement. I wish they had broken out the results for privately insured versus Medicaid/SCHIP versus uninsured kids, because they do refer to HEDIA data that describes the differences. I also note the study is dated: analysis completed in 2000 and literature reviewed in 1995, according to the technical appendix at NEJM.

• posted by John R. Graham
• October 11, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
• Permalink

Post Your Comment Here

Name		*
E-mail		*
Response		*
Enter the characters as they appear in the box to the right		*
		* = Required field