Why It's a Mistake for Doctors to be Color Blind

The first time Bill Clinton ran for president, his campaign chair was determined to keep the famously verbose candidate focused on one topic. So he coined a phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid!” That phrase comes to mind when I think about our country’s Medicaid programs. Medicaid is a federal/state partnership to provide healthcare coverage to…
While I was on vacation, I spoke with reporter about a topic near and dear to my heart – importance of getting clinicians to talk about health care costs with their patients. The reporter put together a very nice piece on the topic, which I thought I would share with you: Doctors Aren’t Grasping For…
Something like one in seven people living in the US have no healthcare insurance. In fact, the number of uninsured people has grown by 7 million since Trump has become president. (Make America Uninsured Again?) These numbers are atrocious. Embarrassing. Shameful, actually, in a country as wealthy as ours. We need to recommit ourselves to guaranteeing people access…
Jill Ladkin was already having a terrible autumn. It began with a seizure that put her in the hospital with what seemed like scores of unfamiliar physicians attending to her state of health. The brain scan revealed a mass in the lining of her brain, a location usually signifying a benign tumor; but, given her seizure, the…
The HPV vaccine saves lives. It does so by reducing a person’s chance of being infected by the human papilloma virus, a virus that causes a whole range of cancers including, most importantly, cervical cancer. Vaccinate your teenage daughter against HPV, and you will increase the chance she will live to old age. Simple as…
Whatever you think about the proper role of the government in nudging adult Americans into healthier habits, you ought to be open to the idea that we, as a society, should be doing something to reduce obesity among children. As I wrote about in Free Market Madness, once people become obese, biology conspires against them…