What happens to the insurance coverage of people who donate kidneys in America?

The recipient’s insurance covers the tab for both the donor and the recipient for the procedure. The donor needs regular follow ups for the rest of his/her life to make sure that one kidney is in tip top shape. The recipient’s insurance drops coverage because they can’t cover this tab forever. They cut the donor off. And then the donor is left with the bill.

Only in America. Our healthcare system is embarrassing.

via NPR

Jay Parkinson shares an NPR link. We've heard a lot about about the supposed greatness of our current system, but reports like this pop up constantly. (Some day, I have to finish T. R. Reid's book about health care around the world.) Tone puts me in mind of a piece I saw the other at Daily Kos, No We Can't.

LAST night I put an oyster on my Seder plate.

While I didn’t particularly want to put something traif atop that most kosher of dishes, this Passover falls on the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. And since BP, the leaseholder of the failed well, seems intent with its new television ads on making us forget about the spill, I felt that something drastic was in order to help us remember. Combining the memorial powers of the Seder plate with the canary-in-the-coal-mine nature of the oyster seemed a good way to keep the disaster — and BP’s promises to clean up its mess — in mind.

At Passover, Paul Greneberg makes startling and effective use (effective because it is startling?) of a metaphor in an op-ed about the BP oil spill at The Times. At the end of the piece he suggests another effective shocker—placing a bowl of oil at the table along with the water for finger washing.

“The stopping of sounds and rhythms,” he added, “it’s really important, because, you know, how can I miss you unless you’re gone? If you just keep the thing going like a loop, eventually it loses its power.”

An insight like this may seem purely subjective, far removed from anything a scientist could measure. But now some scientists are aiming to do just that, trying to understand and quantify what makes music expressive — what specific aspects make one version of, say, a Beethoven sonata convey more emotion than another.

The results are contributing to a greater understanding of how the brain works and of the importance of music in human development, communication and cognition, and even as a potential therapeutic tool.

Fascinating reading at The New York Times—the article quotes Paul Simon, Roseanne Cash, Yo Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, and Daniel Levitin (This is Your Brain on Music). Conversations about synesthesia and stuff like this took over many a piano lesson when I was actually playing. When I think about this, I have to admit that I'd like to be able to understand and explain what makes one piece of music or one performance great, but I'd really just rather appreciate the genius of Mozart or Schubert and enjoy the gift that's been given us.

What's the Most Recent Development?

Renowned scientist and professor of neurology at Brown University, John Donoghue has made incredible advances in interfacing the human brain with computers, allowing paralyzed people to move objects by simply using their imagination. A small chip implanted in the brain picks up the right neural signals and beams them into a computer where they are translated into moving a cursor or controlling a computer keyboard. "By this means, paralysed people can move a robot arm or drive their own wheelchair, just by thinking about it."

What's the Big Idea?

The implications of a brain-computer interface are formidable, from transferring human consciousness onto a computer—in other words, immortality—to using the technology to read people's minds. Military establishments are interested in Dr. Donoghue's research in order to enhance interrogations methods. Were interrogators able to interface the mind of a prisoner with a computer, perhaps information could be extracted they could use to prevent criminal acts and save lives. It seems the next phase of evolution will be synthetic, rather than purely biological. 

Read it at The Guardian

I am so thankful for ideas like this. So much is available to us now that patients could not take advantage of ten years ago or so. What ideas like this will become commonplace in another ten years? Bioness is unbelievably helpful to me, and in a short time it will probably be outdated, just old technology.