Colon Cancer Screening Controversy. Here's What All The Debate Is About.


A recent story on the Atlantic website described a clever way to demonstrate the benefits of bicycling in congested cities. It involves an app that quickly shows people how long it will take to get somewhere by bicycle versus car. And with the crowded cities, bicycles more than hold their own, as this picture shows: And…
US healthcare spending is maddeningly high. As in: fifty percent higher than what other wealthy countries spend, with no evidence we’re getting any bang for all those additional healthcare bucks. In 2014, the state of Maryland took direct aim at this profitless profligacy, enacting a bold (dare I say European?) approach : it gave hospitals fixed…
With jobs disappearing faster than a major league fastball, the public is understandably irate at the damage that greed has wrought upon our economy. Financiers destroy their companies, and our retirement portfolios, and then complain when their bonuses are less than 7 figures. The greedy behavior in recent headlines has not been limited to Wall…
The U.S. medical malpractice system is broken. It frequently does not punish doctors who need punishing, while levying fines against doctors who did nothing wrong. And this dreadfully inaccurate system still manages to take almost five years, on average, to settle claims. Experts have been promoting a type of reform known as “safe harbor rules,”……
Behavioral science has taught me that subtle environmental cues can have a surprisingly strong influence on people. I don’t know if the following cue was purposeful or not, but the relative size of these two receptacles – the blue one being the recycling one of course – definitely sends a strong signal about how much…
Physician burnout in the U.S. is reaching epidemic levels, affecting the majority of physicians in some specialties. Practicing medicine is, of course, a stressful job. Make a mistake and you might end someone’s life. But physicians are not usually burned out by such life and death matters. Instead, it’s the most mundane part of their jobs that’s…