Tag Archives: BRCA

How will BCRA affect your community? Check out this resource

A new tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation lets you see how the Senate health care bill (as it existed in late June) will affect your community.

It enables you look county-by-county at how premiums are tax credits will look in 2020 both under the Affordable Care Act and under the Senate’s proposed repeal and replace bill, Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). Continue reading

Balancing a celebrity endorsement with evidence

Angelina Jolie

Image by Gage Skidmore via flickr.

“The ability to talk to a lot of people is freakish,” said Chris Rock in a conversation with Jerry Seinfeld for his new online show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”

“It’s more freakish than being able to run fast or dunk a basketball or any of those things.”

It’s freakish and powerful, maybe too powerful when it comes to celebrity endorsements of medical tests.

Dubbed “The Katie Couric Effect” for the 20 percent boost to colonoscopies after the popular anchor televised her own screening in March 2000, it’s also been demonstrated in cervical cancer and myriad other kinds of cancer screening tests.

No doubt it is happening again in the wake of Angelina Jolie’s May announcement of her BRCA testing for breast and ovarian cancer. The stock market has bet on it. And some doctors saw spikes in calls from patients after her New York Times op-ed was published. Continue reading