From the category archives:

Health Care Politics

The Perils of Patient Activism

July 31, 2011

Dentists and physicians don’t just treat disease we also treat people. Every tooth has a person attached. It is important we keep the human and emotional elements in mind when providing care.
On the other hand we must stay within the parameters defined by good science, experience and best practices. There is peril in allowing emotion [...]

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The Collectivization of American Health Care

July 14, 2011

 Interesting contrast to this article. Bottom up vs. top down reform.
Accountable care organizations represent the federal government’s latest attempt to “reform” American health care. Through financial carrots and sticks, doctors and hospitals would be “nudged” into large provider groups to deliver medical care according to government practice guidelines.
via Pajamas Media » The Coming Collectivization of [...]

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Do-it-Yourself Health Reformers

July 9, 2011

The article calls this Do-it-Yourself. I think it is more like a bottom up approach as opposed to the top down central control approach. Either way as dentists we have managed to stay clear of much of the problem but as patients, now and in the future, we will be effected by whatever model we [...]

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Healthcare Like Canada?

June 26, 2011

Stealthmode is written by Francine Hardaway a former patient and technology consultant. Following is an excerpt from a recent conversation she had with her family physician who has practiced both in Canada and the US. Worth reading.
In Canada, the untold story is that although they are insured, 300,000 people are without a primary care doctor [...]

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The Changing Character of Medicine: Are We Headed in the Right Direction?

June 15, 2011

An interesting essay by a physician looking at the changing landscape of the medical profession. She makes the case that self employed physicians have more incentive to treat the patient as opposed to employee physicians whose incentive is to please the boss. Of course politics gets involved as well. Worth reading.
When you are ill, do [...]

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New Poll: Americans Still Detest Obamacare

June 11, 2011

Voters continue to favor repeal of the national health care law passed last year and believe the legislation will increase the federal deficit.
via New Poll: Americans Still Detest Obamacare – Guy Benson.

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The Problems with Precaution: A Principle without Principle

June 4, 2011

In theory precaution and careful planning seem so obviously right. After all you should, “Look before you leap.” On the other hand, “He who hesitates is lost.”
The linked article from The American Magazine does a good job of explaining the issue and how precaution can go from a virtue to a major problem when we [...]

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Cookbook Medicine

May 27, 2011

On the surface “evidence based” medicine (or dentistry) seems so right, so obvious. Yet below the surface is where the demons lie. On the one hand we don’t want quacks wandering off into never never land with false cures that waste money and squander hope. Providing what is “proven” to be the best treatment is [...]

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E-Bay for Doctors

May 20, 2011

This is an idea I find both fascinating and frightening. Shop for a doc online. This web site called MediBid creates a market place for people seeking and health care and medical care providers and sets up an e-Bay like auction to match patients with doctors and find the lowest price.
“Get your new heart valve [...]

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Reform Health Care Administration and Save Billions

May 19, 2011

Wow, read the linked article below, or at least this excerpt.
…the U.S. will spend nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars on health care paperwork in 2011. The cost will consume one-third of every single dollar that Americans will spend, tax, or borrow to pay for health care… And not one penny of that vast sum [...]

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Who Owns Your Genome? Comments Close Monday

May 1, 2011

Interesting issue. It is a great example of how new technology, new medical technology specifically, creates legal, ethical and political problems that have no simple answer. Not to mention what amazing new things we will be learning and doing as personal genome research and application continues to advance.
there’s a very real chance that the agency will [...]

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First do no Harm

April 30, 2011

A new book written by a (distant) cousin of President Obama. This from an online review:
Dr. Wolf astutely points out how health care became very political in the 1980s. State mandates “re-routed health care dollars not to the most necessary and innovative treatments, but instead to whomever had the best lobbyists.”
 

The full review is here:

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Happy Tax Day

April 18, 2011

Interesting IRS stats from Peggy Ullmann one of my CPA biking buddies:

Most of the income tax burden is borne by upper incomers.  The top 1% of filers paid 38% of all federal income taxes according to the latest statistics from IRS.  This very small slice of taxpayers reported 20% of the total adjusted gross income show [...]

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Bureaucrats vs. Entrepreneurs

April 9, 2011

Yet another take on the different attitudes toward nationalized healthcare. This one is from John Goodman.
In my experience, health care entrepreneurs all tend to view the world in the same way. They tend to believe that:
The source of most of our health policy problems is government, and insurance companies and hospitals whose behavior is not [...]

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Smothering Medical Innovation

April 5, 2011

Thoughtful, well presented essay on the issues behind healthcare reform and possible consequences of various approaches. Loss of innovation is the main theme. One of the other key issues which I have not seen expressed much is the conflict between individual responsibility and community responsibility. Beth Haynes is quoted, ”Once health care expenditures are turned into a [...]

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Health-care providers face change to digital records

March 20, 2011

My local newspaper the AZ Republic has a lengthy Sunday Business article on the use of digital records in medicine. The article addresses the usual issues we face in dentistry in a lay friendly manner. Such as cost, efficiency, security , privacy, and acceptance by reluctant users.
It also mentions something we in dentistry do not share [...]

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Three Part Series on National Healthcare: Forbes

March 19, 2011

The Forbes Magazine article linked below is the first of a three part series. It looks at National Healthcare (Obamacare) from the economic perspective of a small business owner.  The conclusions, which I share, are that despite good intentions the top down, central command, approach creates perverse incentives and is very unlikely to create the improved [...]

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Reducing the cost of Health Care

March 18, 2011

Negotiating with the dentist. The punch line is sadly predictable.

What is even sadder is that as I watched this I was put in mind of an insurance executive or worse yet a national health bureaucrat negotiating the best price regardless of the best practice. Reducing the cost of health care is easy when you put [...]

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Freedom Of Genetic Info

March 2, 2011

Hmmm
In other words, the AMA is seeking to maintain its members’ traditional monopoly over the interpretation of genetic information – and they expect regulators to act as their enforcers, beating down the upstart DTC genomics companies who have wandered onto their sacred turf.
This is, of course, an absurd, desperate demand. If doctors think that people [...]

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ADA urges incremental website regulation

February 18, 2011

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.
If proposed new website accessibility standards are adopted, most dental practices would need to rely on outside service providers to bring their websites into compliance, …The Association estimates that …it would take “millions of dollars and years of work to make all dental practice websites fully [...]

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