Is the VA the Key to Healthcare Reform?
To find out the answer to this question–ok, a partial answer–listen to my appearance on the NPR show The Takeaway. CLICK HERE.
To find out the answer to this question–ok, a partial answer–listen to my appearance on the NPR show The Takeaway. CLICK HERE.
Not long ago, the Joint Commission (a healthcare quality organization) established that patients with pneumonia should receive antibiotics within four hours of diagnosis. Timely diagnosis and treatment can be the difference between life and death in patients with this illness. In fact, some people believe this kind of quality measure should play a large role…
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…
Thousands of children have passed through the doors of Vanderbilt’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. The lobby is bright, full of natural light and decorated in bold colors and kid-friendly shapes such as stars. It hums with the quiet chaos of sick and recovering children. The building opened as Nashville’s first and only freestanding children’s…

Here is a link to an Op-Ed I wrote with two colleagues at Duke, in which we provide a novel explanation for why so many Americans hate Obamacare.
Is a test that costs $800,000 to add one year of life worthwhile? In one survey, most physicians said yes-evidence that controlling costs will require overcoming very powerful, and irrational, psychological forces. Imagine for a moment that you are in charge of the U.S. health care system, and must decide whether to pay for a…
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…