Health Beat

“Useless” (But Needed) -- “A Doctor’s Constant Companion”

From time to time, I cross-post a piece from Pulse: Voices From the Heart of Medicine, an online magazine that uses stories and poems written by patients and health care professionals to talk honestly about giving and receiving medical care.... Read More...

Published Sat, Oct 01 2011 11:42 AM by Health Beat

Court Action Is Necessary To Maintain Medicaid's Integrity

Should private citizens be allowed to sue their state Medicaid programs for imposing rate cuts on doctors and other providers? That’s the question the Supreme Court is currently considering in Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California...

Published Wed, Oct 05 2011 2:29 PM by Health Beat

How Medicine Became a Growth Business

Below, a guest post by Dr. Clifton Meador. Over the years, Meador has practiced as a family doctor, an epidemiologist, a health care administrator and Dean of the University of Alabama Medical School. He also has published many books and... Read More...

Published Mon, May 16 2011 12:26 PM by Health Beat

Medicare Breaks the Inflation Curve

Today, S&P released data tracking the growth of health care costs which showed that over the year ending March 2011, Medicare spending rose at an annual rate of 2.78%—the lowest rate posted for the Medicare Index in its six-year history.... Read More...

Published Fri, May 20 2011 2:24 PM by Health Beat

“Arithmetic Stings When Well People Seek Medical Care”

Below, a transcript of a column by George Lundberg, M.D., Editor-at-Large of MedPage Today that does a very neat job of summing up why healthy people should not be tested for disease unless they are experiencing symptoms or have good... Read More...

Published Mon, Jul 11 2011 1:49 PM by Health Beat

Electronic Health Records: Should Congress “Defund” the Stampede to Convert to EHRs? No, But . . .

Health care information technology [HIT] “is not ready” warns Dr. Scott Silverstein, a clinical IT expert on the faculty at Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology. Writing on Roy Poses’ Health Care Renewal at the end of last...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 2:04 PM by Health Beat

Monopoly Power: As Hospitals and Doctors Join Integrated Health Systems, Will Health Care Prices Rise?

Over at Kevin M.D., Kevin Pho has raised the possibility that health care reformers who are calling for more “large integrated health systems like the Mayo Clinic or Kaiser Permanente” may wind up creating monopolies that have the market clout... Read...

Published Thu, Feb 17 2011 1:41 PM by Health Beat

Fact vs. Fear-mongering About the Independent Payment Advisory Board-Part 1

A headline in last week’s New York Times suggested that, at last, conservatives and liberals have found an issue that they can agree on: “Obama Panel to Curb Medicare Finds Foes in Both Parties,” the story announced, referring to the... Read More...

Published Wed, Apr 27 2011 8:01 AM by Health Beat

Med School Education in China (With a Sidenote on Medical TV Shows in the U.S.)

Over on Kevin M.D. Dr. Vineet Arora writes about what she learned while touring hospitals and a med school in China: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/05/china-medical-school-residency-training.html “My husband and I recently traveled to Wuhan Medical...

Published Fri, May 14 2010 1:22 PM by Health Beat

Is “Data Mining” of Prescription and Patient Records Protected By the First Amendment?

A year ago, I wrote about how pharmaceutical companies are increasingly paying third parties like IMS Health or CVS-Caremark to provide them with the prescribing records and identification information for individual doctors. Armed with this information...

Published Wed, Dec 01 2010 11:46 AM by Health Beat

Peterson-Pew: Balancing the Deficit on the Backs of Seniors and Physicians

As I read the report that the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform released yesterday, http://bit.ly/9MJxr9 two recommendations caught my attention: “A permanent freeze on payments to [all] Medicare physicians “Increase Medicare retirement age to...

Published Thu, Nov 11 2010 12:00 PM by Health Beat

Will CMS’s “Physician Compare” Site Make Choosing a Doctor a More Informed Choice?

Let’s say you’ve enrolled in a new health insurance plan and need to find an internist who participates. How do you decide which doctor to choose? My (long deceased) grandmother made her choices by using the following criteria: She looked... Read More...

Published Wed, Nov 17 2010 1:12 PM by Health Beat

Roll Back Reform? Easy to Say; Hard to Do.

Summary: House Republican leaders unveiled a "Pledge to America" yesterday to repeal the health care overhaul law, along with other promises like canceling the unspent stimulus money. The New York Times asked me to write a short Op-ed for “Room...

Published Fri, Sep 24 2010 1:11 PM by Health Beat

Tuesday, October 5, I will be speaking at a conference on Fiscal Reform in Washington D.C. titled “America’s Fiscal Choices: Strengthening our Economy and Building for our Future”

The conference is sponsored by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Century Foundation, Demos and the Economic Policy Institute. Speakers and moderators include: Paul Krugman, Karen Davis, John Podesta, Larry Mishell, Robert Greenstein, Robert...

Published Sat, Oct 02 2010 11:35 AM by Health Beat

5 Myths and Facts about Medicare — In Pictures

Summary: Not long ago the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac) came out with a data book on Medicare spending. The information is condensed into tables and charts. As I looked at the charts, I found some surprises. Below, myths and... Read More...

Published Thu, Jul 22 2010 1:35 PM by Health Beat

Filed under: Medicare

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