Newsroom Stories

A $10 million, government-funded, multicenter clinical trial of an aggressive treatment for blood clots in the leg known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) will be led by researchers at the School of Medicine. Approximately 250,000 U.S. patients are diagnosed with new DVTs every year.

Painschab“I’m not so much interested in the dogma of one political party or another, but in what the evidence has proven should actually work to make our health care system better.” Matthew Scott Painschab is concerned, first and foremost, with health care reform. The second-year medical student is co-coordinator of the School of Medicine’s Saturday Neighborhood Health Clinic, a free clinic for St. Louisans lacking health insurance. Hometown: Waverton, MN

McBride”We are headed into a time when a confluence of changes are going to lead to a perfect storm, making us finally realize that our health care system needs a major overhaul,” says Timothy D. McBride, Ph.D., leading health economist and professor of social work. McBride is available to discuss candidates’ health care plans and universal health care.

McBride”The problems with Social Security can be solved easily compared to those of Medicare,” says Timothy McBride, leading health economist and associate dean for public health. “Social Security can be fixed right now, although most people don’t want to solve it with tax hikes. We cannot solve Medicare as easily. Medicare is in a serious crisis relative to Social Security,” he says. McBride is available to discuss Social Security and Medicare.

BernsteinAccess to affordable health care has been a recurring topic in current political discussions. Merton C. Bernstein, leading health insurance expert and law professor emeritus says that Medicare is the most practical platform for both extending coverage to everyone and taming medical cost inflation. He is available to discuss the candidates’ health care proposals.

“The problems with Social Security can be solved easily compared to those of Medicare,” says Timothy McBride, leading health economist and associate dean for public health at Washington University in St. Louis. “Social Security can be fixed right now, although most people don’t want to solve it with tax hikes. If passed today, a one-percentage point tax increase on both employers and employees could solve the Social Security problem for 75 years. If we don’t want to raise taxes, another option is to cut benefits by a similar amount and we’re done.” McBride says that the tax increase needed to fix Medicare would be six or seven percentage points in the long run. “We cannot solve Medicare as easily. Medicare is in a serious crisis relative to Social Security,” he says. McBride believes that as soon as the next President is elected “we will hear that we need to solve Medicare and Medicaid.”

Registration is open for the School of Medicine’s Mini-Medical School, now in its 10th year. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about medicine and surgery from Medical School faculty.

The Society for Nuclear Medicine (SNM) has created an annual award named for Michael J. Welch, Ph.D., professor of radiology, of developmental biology and of chemistry at the School of Medicine. Welch, who specializes in the synthesis of new radioactive chemicals for medical imaging, is head of the Radiochemistry Laboratory Institute at the Mallinckrodt Institute […]

To help facilitate interest and participation in the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate and presidential election in November, the Richard A. Gephardt Institute for Public Service is coordinating an all-day, campus-wide voter registration drive Sept. 18.

Photo by Kevin LowderYun Que (in black, next to car), a senior and executive board member of the student group Society of Automotive Engineers, introduces her organization to new engineering students at an orientation picnic Aug. 26 outside Lopata Hall.