History buffs and constitutional scholars, check out this article on The Health Care Blog. It notes a mandate for early American citizens to outfit themselves for the militia, and compares this to the mandate in the recent health care act to purchase private health insurance. The constitutional challenges will likely need to consider this ...
Category Archives: Healthcare Reform
What if All Americans Had at Least Catastrophic Health Care Coverage
I really dislike the term healthcare reform. I think our system needs to be changed not reformed. I assume that I am not the only person who suspects that the recent health care reform act is not going to be the final solution for America’s health care problems. The cost of healthcare is not really ...
How Can We Encourage Medical Students to Choose Primary Care?
A Radical Suggestion - Pay Specialists Less Since 1997 the number of US medical students choosing to go into primary care has decreased by more than 50%. It seems that sources as diverse as the Obama Administration and the Wall Street Journal think that we should find a way to encourage medical students ...
Comparing Enactment of Medicare to Health Care Reform of 2010
Continuing with my series of weekend reads, you’ll enjoy this one from The New Yorker Atul Gawandi writes a historical article about the reaction of the medical community, the segregationist south, and others to Medicare first being written into law in 1965. It is interesting to see how he relates this to the ...
Physicians and Containing Health Care Costs
Kenny Lin MD is a family physician who is an associate editor for the journal American Family Physician and blogs as the Common Sense Family Doctor. This was first posted on his blog on April 15th and gives commentary on the physician’s lack of training in containing costs in health care and the potential conflicts ...
Medicare to Cover Preventative Care
A nice surprise buried somewhere in the Health Care Reform Bill is that starting next year Medicare patients will be able to get annual preventative care exams that are paid for by their health insurance. It may come as a surprise to those of you with commercial insurance who think of coverage of an annual ...
Financial Armageddon
For years I have been concerned about the growth of health care spending and it impact on the US national economy and our ability be competitive in the global economy. In this weeks New England Journal of Medicine is an editorial that lays out the problem in a straightforward way that I found interesting. The Specter ...
More to come about Health Care Reform
Keep tuned. As the ammendments become defined, and the bill's fine print get deciphered, I'll be your source for commentary on what it means to you as a patient. I'll also post about how it affects family physicians and other primary care doctors.
Health Insurers – Too big for the common good?
Are health insurance companines too consolidated, creating a monopoly and lack of competition in many states? Will health insurers get “too big to fail” also? Like banks in the past, health insurance in most states is controlled by a very few insurers. In this
Senate Healthcare Plan
When we elected President Obama it was pretty clear we were going to have some sort of healthcare changes. What makes me smile is that if the final plan was put beside the initial recommendations Senator McCain and Senator Obama as they presented their ideas in the campaign, it looks to me like the final ...