Quote of the Day

“Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people.”
– Helen Keller

“Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people.”
– Helen Keller
In an effort to lose weight, you pass on the steak sizzler at your favorite family restaurant and settle, instead, for a healthy salad. But you might be in for a dieting double whammy. First off, the salad probably has more calories than you realize. For example, Applebee’s Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad packs a whopping…
Shutterstock A baby is born. The delivery was rocky, with the infant’s heart rate showing occasional signs of distress. Later, the parents learn that their child has cerebral palsy, and may never walk normally. Was the obstetrician to blame and, if so, should the parents sue? American medical care is burdened by a flawed and…
We have a vaccine crisis in the this country. Not just the one caused by anti-vaxxers like Jenny McCarthy, scaring Americans away from life-saving childhood vaccines with pseudo-scientific claims about autism. Instead I’m talking about a bigger crisis, one caused by a dangerously thin supply of vaccines. Wise parents who ignore the blatherings of people…
I recently gave a talk about shared decision making at the annual conference for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Here is a nice write-up of that talk. For those of you silly enough not to travel to Florida to hear me pontificate! After listening to the treatment alternatives—surveillance, or active treatment with surgery and radiation—a…
With increasing frequency, Americans are purchasing health insurance plans that require high out-of-pocket costs. Chief among those costs are deductibles, the amount of money a person or family must spend out-of-pocket on medical care in a year before their health insurance “kicks in.” As this figure illustrates, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, deductibles have been…
There has been lots written lately about the soaring cost of cancer care. You’re spending a lot on cancer recently in part because of many wonderful new treatments that come with a substantial price tag. But there has been less chatter about which cancers we are spending money on. Here’s a nice picture illustrating that…