Horgan Seminar Blog

Matthew Kearney Professor John Horgan Seminar in Science Writing: HST 401 September 24, 2024 Reactive medical care and the food industry: a societal failure or a capitalist success? “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”, as pinged by Benjamin Franklin rings true in today's US medical care system. Lifestyles do not promote or align with principles of human wellness. We should grow more awareness of the reason for certain chronic illnesses when there is one, and what we can do to prevent their onset. A shift in the reactionary framework of healthcare, where we wait for someone to prove ill, into preventative medicine to alleviate the economic, physical, and mental burdens of the American class. We shouldn’t need to rigorously define individual well-being to see that some aspects of the American lifestyle negatively affect health and development. Among notable contenders, our food system is not designed to promote the health of our nation and should be reevaluated to find...

  AI and Big Data are rising alongside the national death toll as the wave of digital healthcare and precision medicine runs red. US healthcare networks should not use predictive medical algorithms to triage patient care and acuity. Widely used medical algorithms used to prioritize medical care and resources are biased against Black patients in which predictive medical AI is restricting pharmaceuticals from their target population.  A landmark study published in the journal Science in 2019, assessed racial bias against Black male patients within an algorithm used by hospital networks to identify high-risk patients that qualify for additional resources to manage their health, such as competitive specialized treatment plans for chronic illnesses. The study audited Optum, the health services company that developed the algorithm, and found that the algorithm overpredicted Black male patients' health and falsely concluded that Black patients were healthier than equally sick white...

  Christian Orizabal All For A Pretty Penny: Unaffordable Health Care The COVID-19 Pandemic was a massive scare for all. Panic ensued as no one knew what to do to combat this new life threatening virus. After a couple months of being trapped inside the first vaccine came out and was released to the public for administration. Soon after the second vaccine would come out and many schools would require you to have it administered to be allowed on campus. I went to a medical clinic to have the second vaccine administered and was told that my insurance wouldn’t cover me receiving the second vaccine and that I would have to fork over $40. I left the clinic and visited another clinic that was located in another town not far away from me and they administered the vaccine for free. How could two medical clinics administer the same vaccine, yet one of them required a fee and the other didn’t? Especially in a time when the vaccine is in such high demand. Since 1996 up until 2013 the amoun...

  James Flanagan HST401-A                                                                         Being Healthy is Simple Actually Don’t you just hate it when your doctor says all you need to do to be healthy is just diet and exercise. It gets even worse when you realize that diet and exercise is the most effective way to prevent obesity. Which according to the CDC, affects 41.9% of U.S. adults over 20, and is known to cause, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 Diabetes, asthma, sleep apnea, and more. We know that obesity is the cause of these symptoms, but it’s not what is being targeted by the healthcare system. Whi...

Shania Sarango $60,548.30. That’s how much my mother’s hospital bill was when she had an emergency surgery in April of 2024. She makes much less than that in one year. How is she expected to pay this amount of money? How is anyone expected to for that matter? Luckily, my mother has health insurance. It’s the most basic plan and it’s pretty decent, but we haven’t heard back from them regarding coverage. It’s been 5 months and so far she’s gotten her X-rays and CT scans covered, but she was in the hospital for 6 days. That’s 6 days worth of pain medication, antibiotics, IV fluids, meals, and round-the-clock care.  I’m not trying to bash our health insurance. I have no doubt in my mind that the majority of my mother’s hospital bill will be covered. We’re a low-income family living in Newark, NJ with Medicaid. What annoys me is the fact that a hospital bill can be that high in the first place, forcing my mother to deal with out-of-pocket costs.  Across the United States, many peop...

Dallas O’Connor Healthcare in the United States is a headache. Actually, it might be classified as a debilitating migraine. But if you want to get that checked out, you will probably have to go to your general practitioner, who will refer you to a neurologist, who will recommend blood tests, or an MRI, or a CT scan (just to rule out other possible conditions), and then prescribe you medication. I really hope you have insurance. But seriously, Healthcare in this country is about as complicated and frustrating of an issue as any. And it’s frustrating because it seems impossible to fix without some sort of cinematic revolution. There are probably countless reasons why healthcare has gotten so rotten, but at its core, I don’t believe profit and health should be intertwined. Does that not seem like common sense? The two hands stitching these ideas together are Private Insurance Companies and Healthcare Organizations. Private health insurance companies are profit-driven meaning their primary...

  Samuel Schradin I find myself in a bit of a moral quandary while writing this. I come from a family of four doctors, most of them with their own independent practices and businesses. All four strive to help others and have a passion for the betterment of their patients. I, being a biomedical engineering major, share the same enthusiasm for advancing the overall health of our society. Under the current system, those who operate in the medical field, willing or not, are not in the healthcare industry, they are in the money industry. I will once again reiterate that there are phenomenal healthcare practitioners who, like my family, genuinely care about their patients' well being. Unfortunately, the parasite that is the oligopoly of insurance companies, greedy corporate hospitals, and lack of equality within patient treatment reduces the morality of medical professionals to a non factor in the face of this money printing machine. Under the watch of a mostly capitalist system, the US ...

Mistrust in the medical field, especially in the US, has been rising within the general public—having a father that is a doctor makes sure I hear about it all. Beyond the undermining and general skepticism around science, doctors and healthcare professionals are finding it hard to have their advice taken seriously. The bottom line is that they spent over a decade in higher education learning about what people think they fully understand after one quick Google search.  The COVID pandemic was an example of huge widespread mistrust in medical professionals. People began to believe misinformation by those without degrees over those with them. Gregory Morgan , professor of history and philosophy of biology and applied ethics at Stevens Institute of Technology said that he was “disheartened during COVID.” He also is worried about public compliance if there were to be another pandemic in the future. It’s not just COVID—mistrust of medical advice has risen, with one study showing that 55% ...