The Health Care Blog

Smoking and mental illness

By Maggie Mahar At last weeks Health 2.0 Conference Maggie Mahar, author of HealthBeatBlog got more than a little feisty about Al Waxman's suggestion that we make people with bad health behaviors pay more. She said that 95% of smokers... Read More...

Published Sun, Oct 11 2009 2:26 PM by The Health Care Blog

Pay (Only) for Health Care that Works

Charles Silver & David A. Hyman Health care is expensive partly because governmental payers and insurers foot the bill for large quantities of medical services that are ineffective, unnecessary, or unproven. According to a RAND report, studies of...

Published Wed, Nov 04 2009 10:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Reform

Modest step in the reform journey shows the idiocy of our political system

By Matthew Holt It does seem to take a health care bill to remind us all how incredibly screwed up the political process is in these here United States. The Medicare Modernization Act was railroaded through by Tom Delay and... Read More...

Published Sun, Nov 08 2009 8:22 AM by The Health Care Blog

Are We Too Small to Succeed?

By DON LINDSTROM The logic behind the government bailouts in the financial and automobile industries goes like this: some institutions are so large and interconnected that their failure could collapse the entire economy. They are considered to be too...

Published Mon, Nov 09 2009 3:50 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: AMA, Economics

Intermountain Healthcare -- Proof That U.S. Hospitals Can Improve

By MAGGIE MAHAR I urge everyone to read this story by David Leonhardt in this Sunday’s (November 8) New York Times. (Thanks to HealthBeat reader Lisa Lindel for spotting it. ) Leonhardt profiles Intermountain Healthcare, a network of hospitals and......

Published Tue, Nov 10 2009 1:09 PM by The Health Care Blog

Seeding the Cloud

By ALEX ESPTEIN The newest new future of computing is floating your way. Lie back on the grass and enjoy. It is The Cloud. Not the corporate Cloud that is the trademarked provider of Wi-Fi services in Europe. But the... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 10:12 PM by The Health Care Blog

Direct Project Implementations Take Flight

By RICH ELMORE and PAUL TUTEN The Direct Project has taken off, with the first-in-the-nation production use of the Direct Project for secure direct clinical messaging. Arien Malec, ONC’s Direct Project Coordinator, announced today that pilots in Minnesota...

Published Wed, Feb 02 2011 1:35 PM by The Health Care Blog

Health Care Reform in the U.K. and U.S

By HERBERT MATHEWSON, MD “England and America are two great nations separated by a common language.” -attributed to both Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw In 1965 I spent the summer of my third year in medical school at the... Read More...

Published Thu, Feb 03 2011 6:51 AM by The Health Care Blog

Shaw Got It Right

By PAUL LEVY George Bernard Shaw wrote The Doctor's Dilemma, Preface on Doctors in 1909. It is fun to read some excerpts: It is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present... Read More...

Published Fri, Feb 04 2011 6:12 AM by The Health Care Blog

You're Sick. I'm Not. Too Bad.

By ELAINE SCHATTNER, MD There’s a popular, partly true, sometimes useful and very dangerous notion that we can control our health. Maybe even fend off cancer. I like the idea that we can make smart choices, eat sensible amounts of... Read More...

Published Mon, Feb 07 2011 4:35 AM by The Health Care Blog

Going Beyond the Dartmouth Debate

By MAGGIE MAHAR We all have heard that “spending more” on health care does not necessarily lead to better care. In fact, in regions of the country where care is more intensive and more expensive, sometimes outcomes are worse. This... Read More...

Published Mon, Feb 07 2011 4:37 PM by The Health Care Blog

Replace The RUC

By BRIAN KLEPPER, PHD A few weeks ago, my writing partner David C. Kibbe and I ran an article on Kaiser Health News called “Quit the RUC!“ that has caused some turmoil within the physician community, particularly in DC. First, it noted that the RUC, the...

Published Thu, Feb 17 2011 6:13 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Brian Klepper, AMA, CMS, Tech, Front Page, RUC

NIH and Drug Innovation

By MERRILL GOOZNER For most of the past decade, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have competed over who could pour more money into the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world. But the party is over. The...

Published Mon, Feb 14 2011 4:51 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Merrill Goozner, Op-Ed, NIH, NEJM, Drug development

What Venture Capital Can Learn from Emerging Markets

By VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN and JUSTIN CHAKMA Venture capitalists are increasingly interested in emerging markets, and in working with local funds based in those markets (despite the fact that reverse innovation in venture capital seems counterintuitive). The...

Published Sun, Feb 20 2011 1:22 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Front Page

Getting DIRECTLY to the Point

By RICH ELMORE and ARIEN MALEC A patient’s health records are no longer confined to a doctor’s office, shelved inside a dusty file cabinet. With the advent of the Nationwide Health Information Network, a framework of standards, services and policies that...

Published Mon, Feb 21 2011 8:03 AM by The Health Care Blog