02/08/2010 01:09 PM

I watch the Super Bowl for the ads. Which I suppose is kind of like saying that I read Playboy for the articles, except that in the case of the Super Bowl ads, it’s true.  “Parisian Love” by Google was the best by far, and is probably the first time I teared up watching someone else do a Google search. (I tear up plenty on my own searches… try Haiti and you’ll know what I mean.) The Google ad (first TV ad every for this advertising firm) tells the story of a romance helped along by a series of Google searches conducted by some guy who finds a new life  after a plan to study abroad in Paris turns into love, marriage and a need to know how to assemble a [...]

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02/05/2010 12:23 PM

Legislative lip service talks multilingual medical care, for Medicare beneficiaries. But the best intentions of regulators still leaves lots of LEP (Limited English Proficient) patients  in the lurch. According to The California Medicare Part D Language Access Coalition report “Please Hold”, subtitled “Medicare Plans Leave Limited English Proficient Beneficiaries Waiting for Access,” getting help when you don’t speak English is tough. They had a bunch of callers playing LEP Medicade recipients call and try to get some questions answered. Responses, detailed in earlier posts, are anecdotal, and sound very familiar to what we’ve seen. These guys were pretty hard on the telephone interpreting services that most healthcare providers rely on to improve access for non-English speakers. But as is clear from the report and again my own experience, that LEP problems don’t magically [...]

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