Alisa Berger is a urologist.

Big pharma’s grip on health care: time for change

Meds
March 25, 2025

Everyone seems so scared of the word government regulation when it comes to health care. Why? In part, this is because those against regulations (everyone making money off health care) make sure to scare laypeople into equating such action with socialism. Fear of concept is not a good argument against regulating monopolies that are bankrupting millions of Americans. Pretty sure most Americans would be happy to have limitations placed on …

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Big pharma’s grip on health care: time for change

Why doctors must talk about death: the truth about CPR and end-of-life care

Conditions
February 1, 2025

When I was a general surgery intern, I was doing my very early morning pre-rounds on a frail female patient in her late 70s with significant cardio- and peripheral vascular disease. She’d been in the hospital for weeks and wasted away to no more than 85-90 pounds. She was not able to get out of bed unassisted. I don’t even remember why she was in the hospital, but what I …

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Why doctors must talk about death: the truth about CPR and end-of-life care

Why doctors must take charge to save our failing health care system

Physician
October 6, 2024

I recently wrote an article about the problems with our broken health care system, ending with a call for doctors to help develop solutions. In follow-up, here are some possible solutions to consider before the system self-implodes. There is concern that, without any changes, Medicare will run out of funding by 2031. Here are a few things that I think could help.

Address physician burnout

It’s real, and COVID-19 made it …

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Why doctors must take charge to save our failing health care system

America’s broken health care system: Can doctors lead the fix?

Policy
May 25, 2024

America’s health care system, much like Congress, is broken, and doctors have to be part of the solution. I don’t know a single doctor who doesn’t wish to improve our ability to increase access and the delivery of health services to our patients. Maintaining and/or improving the health of patients is our goal. That should be the goal of anyone associated with the health careRead more…

America’s broken health care system: Can doctors lead the fix?