Multiple Sclerosis

Medicare: Lawsuit charges government with denying care to thousands of chronically ill

San Jose Care Resource Guide: Yes,  we sometimes have to sue Medicare, i.e. our government, to get proper care.  Here is a link to the article in the  Chicago Tribune. This article was brought to our attention by Ernest A. Wahrburg, BA(PSY), MSW, LCSW (NC & NY)/LinkedIn

Quoting the Chicago Tribune: “…The  Center for Medicare Advocacy, which filed the lawsuit with Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s Action Network, Paralyzed Veterans of America, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation…”

So what is the Center for Medicare Advocacy? Seems like a large well organized pro-Obamacare health care advocacy site. In fact one one their article’s title is “HEALTH CARE REFORM DOES NOT CUT MEDICARE BENEFITS” ….

So why are they suing Medicare, A.K.A, the (Obama) government?

Quoting the Tribune, quoting them,

“…Under the law, Medicare is obligated to provide health care and therapy that are “reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury,” according to the legal complaint. Yet through the years, program administrators have decided that services will only be reimbursed if patients show signs of getting better, the complaint notes…..”

San Jose Care Resource Guide: This Medicare policy, of course, choose to ignore that , for many  chronically ill, not getting worse is the name of the game!

San Jose Care Resource Guide: Fact is, bombast or not, liberal government will cut and/or weazzle out of social obligations like anybody else….Particularly when the group targeted for cuts does not seem politically significant. I.e. the disabled….The Obama admistration will rather spend our healthcare money on worthy  causes like

See our previous posts on the topic

• With Medicaid waiver, California dives into health care reform (stateline)
• Multiple sclerosis and it’s Financial Burden: Comments on the Guardian’podcast
•  HealthCare: California’s Gov. Brown’s proposed steep healthcare cuts
• Ways The New Health Law May Affect You in 2011 (KHN)
• Health Care Law Should Help With Jail Inmate Treatment (thecrimereport)
• Medi-Cal and Gender Reassignment Procedures

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Natalizumab [Tysabri] therapy increases the percentage of patients showing stable or even ameliorated electrophysiological response (pubmed)

San Jose Care Resource Guide: 

In a nutshell: The study, posted in pubmed, is talking about possible improvement of nerve response time. or  evoked potential [WebMD].    As WebMD says , evoked potential is a fancy name for the time it takes for your nerves to respond to stimuli.

Sounds like  healing!

Talk to your Doctor

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Multiple Sclerosis: Endurance Horse Riders Are Riding with MS! (4UALL)

SJCRG: Butter Bea and  Alexandra North are two endurance horse riders with MS

Quoting 4UALL: 

• “….Last year, Butter Bea finished in the top ten, 21 out of 27 races. At the end of the racing season, she ran six races in less than a month, and won five of those six races. After four years of intensive training, Butter Bea has become an endurance machine with a competitive spirit that can be crushing at times.”
•  …. Alexandra North took up the sport of endurance riding in 1995, just a few months before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She is now in remission, which she credits to endurance riding.

Brave Riders!

Link to  4UALL for the fascinating article.

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Canadian woman experiences issues after receiving Multiple Sclerosis treatment CCSVI

San Jose Care Resource Guide: CCSVI or Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency is a theory about the cause of MS, where the blame is put on poor blood circulation in the brain. See link to Wikipedia for more background.  

According to Rebecca Cooney, as quoted in CBC News,  ”..It was like [after treatment] I had a vacation from MS for 4 weeks…”. But MS symptoms returned.
Was it a question of lack of treatment follow up, or something else?

Links between MS and the Immune system issue are well documented, and several drugs working on the immune system are FDA approved.  Maybe CCSVI is a subset of a complex problem.

Talk to your Doctor….

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Telephone-Administered Therapy and Quality of Life among Patients with Multiple Sclerosis (Pubmed)

SJCRG: Not everybody who needs counselling can easily go to therapy appointment.  Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients are a very good subset  of  chronically ill class to evaluate different methods of phone therapy support. So we are happy to have found this study from the Center for the Management of Complex Chronic Care,Il.    The study formed two groups:

1. Patients given  telephone-Administered Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
2. Patients given   telephone-administered  Supportive emotion-focused Therapy

The study concluded:  Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy  provided greater Quality of Life benefits compared with supportive emotion-focused Therapy.

SJCRG Notes: So it seems that phone therapy works and highly skilled therapy works best: Not a surprise, but documented

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