If you are having a hard time choosing between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney, here are some weekend reading assignments for you. Whether you’re interested in stem cell research or Jeep jobs or Medicare, these independent websites (no lamestream media here) let you check the truthiness of candidate claims and understand where the two men stand.
Beyond healthcare reform, the election could affect jobs in medical research and development. Gov. Romney said in the third debate that the government money should not go to private companies. This seemed to be a slap in the face to many in the healthcare industry who have been trying to get public dollars into private companies. One MedCity News reader commented:
I was a big Romney supporter, but he pushed me into voting Obama with this one statement. Unless he comes out strongly and quickly for SBIR, he has lost my vote and perhaps the votes of my 70 employees and their families. Now multiply that by 20,000 SBIR companies, and he threw out over a million votes he would have had otherwise.
Transforming Patient Care: The Role of AI-Powered Assistants
The progress in artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping patient care, across various dimensions, from facilitating faster discharge to curating treatment plans and suggesting lifestyle changes.
To get a better idea of how each candidate stands on issues that affect your life sciences startup, check out the bioethics page from The Hastings Center. The center is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit bioethics research institute, and addresses ethical issues in health, medicine and the environment.
The site offers side-by-side comparisons of each candidate’s positions on the biomedical research and eduction, climate change and stem cell research.
TechPresident.com has information about the governor and the president, but the most interesting part of the site is the blog that tracks the intersection of technology and the elections. President Obama gets a lot of credit for a strong get-out-the-vote effort, but did you know Gov. Romeny’s campaign has an app to track turnout?
TechPresident can tell you who has the best technology, but PolitiFact will tell you whose pants are on fire. PolitiFact has a list of the biggest lies of the campaign from both Democrats and Republicans.
If you are wondering who did the most shopping for replacement pants, pick an issue — jobs at Jeep, the sequestration (aka fiscal cliff), retirement checks for convicted felons, and test your assumptions.
Reducing Clinical and Staff Burnout with AI Automation
As technology advances, AI-powered tools will increasingly reduce the administrative burdens on healthcare providers.
Stats on who relies on #SocialSecurity and #Medicare, state by state. See yours: aarp.us/QSBQ4E #earnedasay
— Official AARP Tweets (@AARP) October 17, 2012
PolitiFact lists statements about Medicare cuts as one of the most contentious issues of the campaign.
If you’d like to know who uses this health insurance from the government, check AARP’s state-by-state report on who uses Medicare and Social Security.
Here are a few factoids from the AARP list:
- On average, Minnesota’s Medicare beneficiaries spent an estimated $5,200 on out-of-pocket
healthcare costs in 2011. - Nearly 98 percent of older Minnesota seniors, or 678,362, were enrolled in Medicare in 2011.
- In contrast, roughly 7 percent of Minnesota’s 50-to 64-year-olds were uninsured in 2010.
- On average, Idaho’s Medicare beneficiaries spent an estimated $3,100 on out-of-pocket
healthcare costs in 2011. - In 2011, average Idaho seniors on Medicare spent an estimated 9 percent of their income on
out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
Ever wondered about the copay for Medicare? AARP has the details on that too. It looks like it depends on how old and how sick you are.
I don’t know why I was surprised, but Google has a fantastic elections page. All state and county election boards should use this model for their own sites (or maybe outsource this job to Google, as everything works better if it’s done by the private sector).
Type in your address and you’ll get not only your election day polling place location, but your early voting location as well and a list of candidates for everyone from president to state superintendent of education to county surveyor.
If you’re wondering what any of the candidates are tweeting about, Google has you covered there too with links to each person’s Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google+ account — even all the third-party candidates that everyone else foolishly ignores.
I have made contributions to the president’s campaign this year, but I have also done voter registration. I registered about 30 people to vote and I never asked party affiliation or candidate of choice. Everyone should vote, may the best man win.