March 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Medicaid and (supposed) Welfare Dependence

By HAROLD POLLACK Jonathan Cohn has a piece on Medicaid yesterday with which I agree. I want to amplify one related point. National Review and Forbes writer Avik Roy believes that Medicaid is a “humanitarian catastrophe” which is actually...

Published Sun, Mar 13 2011 5:38 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicaid, Welfare, Harold Polllack, Avik Roy

The Incredible and Wasteful Complexity of the US Healthcare System

By HUMPHREY TAYLOR and IAN MORRISON During the health care reform debate, we wrote that most people’s attitudes to it were “confused, conflicted, clueless and cranky.” A major reason was that the American health care “system” is fiendishly complicated...

Published Thu, Mar 24 2011 7:03 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Regulation, Harris Poll, Complexity, US Healthcare system, Doughnut Hole

Shaken, Flooded, Stressed by Power Outages, Fukushima Daiichi Moves into Second Place

By ROD ADAMS Two weeks ago, I wrote an article titled Nuclear plant issues in Japan are the least of their worries that attempted to provide a realistic prediction of the worst case consequences of the one-two punch from a very large earthquake and tsunami...

Published Thu, Mar 31 2011 6:06 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Rod Adams, Radiation, Fukushima Daiichi, Nuclear energy

Defined Contribution Health Care—The Conservatives’ Silver Bullet

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI Conservatives are in a full court press these days telling us the answer to America’s out-of-control health care costs—and our fiscal crisis—is to move Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code subsidy for private insurance to a defined...

Published Tue, Mar 01 2011 7:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Robert Laszewski, Front Page, Conservatives, Defined contribution

Why Berwick Matters

By ROBERT WACHTER Two cover stories in this week’s Time magazine debate a provocative question: Is America in decline? Both the yes and no arguments are made persuasively, and I found myself on the fence after reading them, perhaps leaning ever-so-slightly...

Published Sat, Mar 12 2011 5:07 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, CMS, PPACA, Berwick, IHI

Primary Care Workforce Situation: Not Hopeless

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS I sometimes observe that the only sector of the economy as messed up as health care is higher education, where the US has some great institutions but where costs are incredibly high and have been rising relentlessly for long periods...

Published Sat, Mar 26 2011 3:49 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians, David Williams, Primary care physicians

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

By KIMBERLEY MANNING, MD On May 19, 1996, I graduated from medical school. And although I look and seem ridiculously youthful (I know, that’s what you were saying) it’s been–as my patients at Grady like to say–”a mi-nute”...

Published Sun, Mar 27 2011 10:37 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

The Fall of Berwick?

By MAGGIE MAHAR When President Obama named Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) last March, I wrote this: “Most who know Berwick describe him a ‘visionary’ and a ‘healer,’ a man able to survey the fragments of a broken...

Published Wed, Mar 09 2011 6:36 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Maggie Mahar, CMS, Donald Berwick, Senate

The Urgency of Medicaid Reform

By AVIK ROY Austin Frakt has penned a reply to a recent piece I wrote on Medicaid for my health-policy blog on Forbes, The Apothecary. Austin is a guy who takes the time to address opposing points of view, to his credit, and I’ve enjoyed my back-and-forth...

Published Wed, Mar 09 2011 6:15 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicaid, University of Virginia

Unjust Enrichment

By MARGALIT GUR ARIE A new lawsuit has been filed this month in an attempt to curtail the unconsented and currently legal traffic of de-identified medical records, this time against pharmacy giant Walgreens. The class action suit brought by Todd Murphy...

Published Mon, Mar 21 2011 4:11 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

Sermo teams with J&J

By Matthew Holt One of the big stories at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Diego is that Sermo is partnering with Janssen Global Services (part of J&J) to created tools for doctors to help them move their patients through the health care system. It’s...

Published Tue, Mar 22 2011 5:41 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Quest for the “Not For Comfort” Healthcare Organization

By JOE FLOWER The current reorganization of health care could make it better and cheaper for everyone, harnessing real creative and competitive energies to build the “next health care”—or it could lead to local monopolies, higher prices and less real...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 11:05 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Joe Flower, ACOs, co-management, PCMHs

Medicaid and Health Outcomes (again)

By AUSTIN FRAKT Avik Roy has read and posted about the papers I reviewed as part of my Medicaid-IV series. If you’ve forgotten, the purpose of that series of posts was to examine studies that use proven, sound methods to infer the causal effect of (as...

Published Fri, Mar 04 2011 1:10 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Medicaid, Uninsured, Front Page, Austin Frakt, Health Outcomes

From Jeopardy! To Your Physician’s Black Bag: Could a Supercomputer Really Assist With Health Care?

By DAN PELINO IBM’s Jeopardy-champion computer, Watson, has huge potential for helping physicians and other clinicians work with patients. The leap from TV game show to physicians’ offices will probably take at least two years. But Watson’s understanding...

Published Mon, Mar 14 2011 8:12 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Physicians, Watson, IBM, Medicine

Heritage–Even More Prizes

Heritage Provider Network used to be an under-the-radar IPA in S. California. Then they announced a $3m prize for anyone able to correctly predict hospital admissions from their data. Now they’ve announced a series of milestone prizes over the next...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 2:48 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro