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Party First, Ideology Later
ByadminWe think of political parties as being ideological homes. If you embrace conservative ideas, you gravitate to the Republican party, and so on. But probably just as often, people have party homes (“My dad was a Dem, and so am I”), in which whatever the party embraces magically fits their ideology. Consider the following picture…
To Promote Children’s Health, We Need to Address Childhood Poverty
ByadminPoverty wreaks havoc on children’s lives, stunting their intellectual development and harming their health. Children raised in poverty experience declines in growth and development, becoming susceptible to numerous otherwise preventable illnesses in the process. Tragically, almost 1 in 5 American children live in poverty: Republicans and Democrats must agree on the importance of helping American…
Who Provides More Unnecessary Care: Physicians or Nurse Practitioners? (The Answer Is Surprising)
ByadminImagine you have been struggling for eight days with a bad cough, with what feels like a lifetime’s worth of secretions in your upper airways. When you called your primary care physician’s office, she wasn’t available, so you got an appointment with a nurse practitioner, who prescribed a course of antibiotics. Would you fill the…
Merger Mania in Medicine — What Will It Cost Us?
ByadminThe federal government is currently debating whether the big six health insurance companies in the U.S. will soon become the big four. Aetna and Humana have announced plans to merge, as have Anthem and Cigna. The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association strongly oppose the mergers, saying they will reduce competition in consumer…
Got a Big Belly? (Why Big Sugar Is to Blame)
ByadminPhoto Credit: LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images Growing up Republican, I have long believed in personal responsibility. In junior high school, when I observed close relatives who struggled with obesity, I vowed to never let myself get out of shape. (“Junior high” is what we called middle school back in the day.) When hip surgery gone wrong…
Will Lowering The Price Of Genetic Testing Raise The Cost Of Medical Care?
ByadminThe first time scientists sequenced a person’s entire genome, it took more than a decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Currently, such sequencing takes less than twenty-four hours and costs less than $5,000: To put that into perspective, Myriad Genetics charges $3,000 to test for mutations in just two genes associated with breast…

