iPods and iPhones, Flip videos and pocket-sized digital cameras are way-cool and innovative. Pharmaceuticals? Not so much. According to Ipsos’s survey into global consumers’ perceptions of what’s innovative, the top which at least 1 in 2 Americans find innovative are electronic media, computers, cameras and video equipment. Household products are ranked innovative by about 1 [...]

Americans love their cars, their houses, and their food. Based on a survey by ING Direct, the financial services company, these are the last 3 things we would sacrifice to save money.On the other hand, the most dispensable things for Americans include day care/nannies, cleaning services, education, and gifts. Women would be more likely to [...]

“Internet provides public with health care information that they value and trust and which often stimulates discussion with their doctors,” concludes the latest Harris Poll into cyberchondria, a term that the organization began using in 2002. But Harris Poll’s survey yields a different conclusion for me that I think is a sign of the times: [...]

Comparative-effectiveness is a cornerstone in President Obama’s vision of health reform, and is a component of the ARRA stimulus package. But if it’s just about a pill-to-pill comparison, it won’t do Americans’ public health much good.In an insightful perspective in the July 23rd 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kevin Volpp [...]

Middle-class Americans – those with incomes from $44,000 to $88,000 — face mounting out-of-pocket costs that are eroding household disposable income available for food, shelter, and energy line items.While most of the uninsured are from lower-income families, 11 million of the uninsured live in middle class working families. Most of the growth of the uninsured [...]