More Debate on the Future of Primary Care

Byadmin March 8, 2013

Recently, I posted in Forbes about our need to rethink primary care, to avoid a physician shortage. The debate continues, as seen in this interesting post from Dan Diamond.
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Health Policy

Medicare Versus Inflation: Who's Winning Now?

Byadmin May 9, 2013

There is one thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle agree upon: the biggest threat to the future fiscal solvency of the United States is Medicare, the program that pays medical expenses for elderly and disabled Americans. For many years now, the Medicare budget has been growing much faster than the economy as…

Health & Well-being | Health Policy

Most provocative sentence of the week?

Byadmin January 19, 2012

Whatever you think of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that the Obama administration decided to keep behind pharmacy counters rather than let women and girls buy it OTC, you have to admit that the New England Journal authors wrote a heck of a provocative sentence, after reviewing the number of scientific committees that had deemed the medication safe. (The article is by Wood, Drazen and Greene, from January 12.) After pointing out that adolescent girls can already buy lethal doses of Tylenol OTC without any questions asked, and after explaining that the only known risks of Plan B are nausea and delayed menses, they land a hard punch right on the jaw of the Obama administration:
“Any objective review makes it clear that Plan B is more dangerous to politicians than to adolescent girls.”
Ouch!

Behavioral Economics and Public Policy | Health Policy

If You Want to Avoid a C-Section Choose Your Hospital Wisely

Byadmin March 6, 2019

We have an epidemic of C-sections in the US, now accounting for almost 1 in 3 births. That represents a 50% increase since the mid-90s, despite all the advances we’ve seen in obstetrical care. Sometimes C-sections are critical to saving the life of either baby or mother. But C-sections are major surgical procedures, with commensurate risks….

Health Care Cost | Health Policy

You Thought Innovation Was Hard, How about De-Innovation?

Byadmin February 6, 2015

David Asch and I recently published an article in Health Affairs on the challenge of getting healthcare practitioners to stop doing things they are accustomed to doing, even when the evidence that those things are harmful becomes overwhelming. Here is a teaser from that article, and a link to the full piece: As hard as…

Ethics | Health Policy | Medical Decision Making

Death by Poison – A New American Epidemic

Byadmin September 12, 2019January 6, 2020

I’ll get right to the dismal data: Americans are dying from poison at an alarming rate. In 2005, death by poison in the U.S. occurred in about 11 of every 100,000 people over age 15. By 2016, that number had more than doubled, to 24. Any guesses at what could explain this horrific statistic? (To…

Behavioral Economics and Public Policy | Health Policy

A Moderate Republican Plan To Fix American Healthcare: 'Medicare For All'?

Byadmin December 17, 2018

Everyone thinks of “Medicare for All” as a liberal idea, an extremely liberal one embraced by the socialist wing of the Democratic Party. It’s an idea Democrats were hesitant to embrace in the Obama era, for being too far out of mainstream political thought. It was thought of as an idea that was too easy…

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