Federalizing Medicaid

Here is a new post I’ve got up at the Health Care Cost Monitor, in which I try to convince folks that even Republicans should be in favor of federalizing Medicaid. I’d love your feedback, as I’m still developing this idea.

Here is a new post I’ve got up at the Health Care Cost Monitor, in which I try to convince folks that even Republicans should be in favor of federalizing Medicaid. I’d love your feedback, as I’m still developing this idea.
It is well known that Medicare expenditures threaten the financial solvency of the U.S. government. And it is pretty well agreed upon that some of our Medicare spending goes towards wasteful medical care. But which medical care is wasteful and how much is such care costing us? A study in JAMA Internal Medicine provides a…
Ask physicians if our messed up malpractice system causes them to practice “defensive medicine,” and most will probably say yes – hard not to be paranoid with so many lawsuits affecting so many physicians. Some experts even contend that major reforms of our malpractice system could go a long way towards controlling spiraling healthcare costs. On the…
We all know that healthcare costs in the U.S. are too high. But why is American healthcare so expensive? Some experts blame the desire for profit. Russell Andrews, a neurosurgeon and author of Too Big To Succeed laments “the morphing of American medicine from a function of a humanitarian society into a revenue stream for healthcare profits, drug…
It’s comforting to think that most healthcare problems in the U.S. could be solved by letting the power of an unregulated free market do its work. It’s also wishful thinking and overly simplistic, according to Peter Ubel, MD, a general internist, behavioral scientist, and Duke University public policy professor who blogs for Forbes and The…
With its expansion of Medicaid eligibility, the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was supposed to go a long way towards providing healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. That accomplishment was dealt a large blow by the Supreme Court, when it forbade the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage. Nevertheless, many states…
I felt a woman’s uterus without her permission. How this happened, and why I thought I had done the right thing at the time, tells us something important about medical education and shows us why doctor/patient interactions often play out like conversations between earthlings and aliens… (Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)