Health Beat

Taking On The "Epidemic" of Health Care Fraud

When it comes to reducing health care spending, everyone agrees that ferreting out the fraud and abuse in the system is absolutely imperative. But despite this urgency, because fraud pervades almost every facet of our health care system, routing it.....

Published Thu, Aug 25 2011 3:46 PM by Health Beat

Myths about Medical Malpractice: Part 2 Crisis or Hoax?

Conservatives call it the “malpractice crisis.” Public Citizen, a liberal non-profit consumer organization based in Washington D.C., calls it “The Great Medical Malpractice Hoax.” No doubt you have read that ambulance-chasing lawyers have escalated their...

Published Thu, Jun 30 2011 2:29 PM by Health Beat

Primary Care and the National Health Service Corps: Finding Physicians “Who Will Go Where No One Else Will Go”

Roughly 65 million Americans live in places where there are at least 2,000 potential patients for each lonely physician. No surprise, these tend to be impoverished rural regions, or depressed inner cities. We call them “underserved areas.” If we paid...

Published Thu, Mar 03 2011 7:17 AM by Health Beat

Calling the Health Bill a “Job-Killer” is “Inflammatory Rhetoric”

A lot of thought goes into the naming of new legislation. Calling the health bill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act hits on the essential goals of health care reform—medical security and financial savings. So the GOP’s proposed law... Read...

Published Thu, Jan 06 2011 2:53 PM by Health Beat

A Non-physician Who Teaches Doctors: “I Regard the Medical Profession with Awe”

Below , a story by Lawrence Dyche from Pulse: Stories from the Heart of Medicine. I wish that more people like Dyche observed residents, taught them, and learned from them. I’m sure that most residents would appreciate the encounter. As... Read More....

Published Fri, Jan 07 2011 8:20 PM by Health Beat

Health Care 2010: A Battle From Start to Finish

As 2010 comes to a close, The Century Foundation has once again charged us with composing a “Best of/Worst of” list to recount the year’s highs and lows in health care. I am off for vacation tomorrow so my list... Read More...

Published Tue, Dec 21 2010 1:38 PM by Health Beat

Cancer Breakthrough?

In an Opinion column on CNN, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, M.P.H., a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy & Clinical Practice and the author of Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health" (Beacon Press......

Published Wed, Jan 19 2011 11:25 AM by Health Beat

A Nurse Faces Her Diagnosis: Incurable Cancer

Amy Berman tells her story here, on the Health Care Blog. http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2011/01/can-good-care-produce-bad-health.html#comments Her courage and eloquence are remarkable. Facing death, she is able to express her concern...

Published Sun, Jan 30 2011 5:45 PM by Health Beat

Reality Check: Haley Barbour, BMWs and Medicaid Recipients

It seems old lies never die—especially when it comes to entitlement programs for the poor. In the contentious debate over how to reduce spending in state Medicaid programs, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) insisted that one solution for his state.....

Published Wed, Mar 02 2011 2:06 PM by Health Beat

Medicare will pay $93,000 for Provenge: A Big Win for Wall Street

Summary: Last week, Medicare made the decision to commit to paying $93,000 per patient to cover Provenge, a cancer drug that promises to give the average patient suffering from end-stage prostate cancer an extra four months--though it doesn’t appear to...

Published Mon, Apr 04 2011 6:51 AM by Health Beat

This Year’s Pulitzer for Sophistry

Joseph Rago, a senior editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday for a collection of pieces that mount a relentless attack on the federal health care law that he derogatorily refers to as “ObamaCare.” Editorial... Read...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 2:25 PM by Health Beat

When Poverty and Unemployment Are Misdiagnosed . . . The Limits of “Medicine”

“I diagnosed ‘abdominal pain’ when the real problem was hunger,” admits Dr. Laura Gottlieb in a wonderfully candid Op-ed that explains why physicians so often fail to recognize poverty as the true cause of what appears to be a physical... Read More.....

Published Wed, May 04 2011 8:32 AM by Health Beat

Cancer Drug Shortage: Why Is This Not Front-Page News?

Below, a guest post by Paul Raeburn, a journalist and author, and a media critic at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker This weekend, those of us who live in New York and on the East Coast were treated for days... Read More...

Published Mon, Aug 29 2011 12:27 PM by Health Beat

ALEC: The Industry-Sponsored Group Behind State Efforts to Sabotage Health Reform

The last time the states were rallied to rise up against federal legislation was during the civil rights battle over forced integration of schools. A similar call for organized state-level resistance is now being made in a manifesto recently published...

Published Wed, Aug 31 2011 9:08 AM by Health Beat

One Family’s Story

I urge everyone to read “What Broke My Father’s Heart” in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, a superb first-person narrative by Kay Butler http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?ref=magazine Butler describes how our money-driven...

Published Sat, Jun 19 2010 1:36 PM by Health Beat

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