Health care efficiency can mean different things

Health Policy
July 31, 2014

Whether you’ve praised or vilified Obamacare, see it as an amazing achievement or an existential threat, it is the law of the land.  The price transparency created by online exchanges, a vital part of the law, stands to make cost the biggest driver of choice. This, along with cuts in government health spending, will disrupt the economics of health care in dramatic new ways.

Our first response to this brave new …

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Health care efficiency can mean different things

The Apple Genius Bar could learn some bedside manner

Health Technology
July 26, 2010

My life is wired by Steve Jobs and Apple. When I was a kid, my first computer was an Apple IIc, followed by Macintosh Plus for college. In residency, I used a Newton for a while to take notes on patients. I have a MacBook, an iPod (I’ve actually had 3 and my wife has had 2), an iPhone, iPhone 3gs; an iPhone 4 on order; an iPad, AirPort Express, …

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The Apple Genius Bar could learn some bedside manner

Medicine needs to get back to hands-on basics, rather than focusing on technology

Conditions and Diseases
November 14, 2009

There is plenty to criticize in our bungling trek toward health reform. Leaders on the right, left and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have sidestepped the crucial conversation of controlling the cost of care, in favor of partisan rhetoric about “death panels” and “rationing care.” Worse, the entire focus of reform has centered on spending billions of dollars on technology solutions that will only make marginal changes in the cost and …

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Medicine needs to get back to hands-on basics, rather than focusing on technology

Dean Ornish injects himself in the health reform debate

Health Policy
September 14, 2009

It looks like The Huffington Post’s honorary Medical Editor, Dr. Dean Ornish, walked into the same trap that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey did.

Mackey got a lot of flack when he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on health care reform, one in which he emphasized the need for personal responsibility for our health.

Ornish, in an effort to inject himself into the current debate, blogged, Don’t Tread on …

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Dean Ornish injects himself in the health reform debate

Grading the Gates Foundation

Medications
May 31, 2009

A recent study in Lancet becomes the first study to pull back the curtain on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its impact on global health.

Since the money the Gates Foundation spends on global health (61% of its total $2.01 billion budget) is almost as large as the entire budget of the WHO, and because it is not a passive donor (it actively engages in policy making and agenda …

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Grading the Gates Foundation

Does violence on TV and in the media really lead to violent behavior?

Social Media in Medicine
May 10, 2009

We’ve become accustomed the notion that media violence is bad for children, and that exposure to it can lead to all kinds of problems, including violent behavior. Those us who remember Columbine in 1999 will certainly recall reports that the killers played the videogame Doom and listened to Marilynn Manson before they went on their tragic rampage. Less dramatic anecdotes pop up regularly.

But there’s a new, detailed analysis of media …

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Does violence on TV and in the media really lead to violent behavior?

Anti-vaccine ads, and how false advertising harms children

Social Media in Medicine
April 29, 2009

Where is the line between true and false advertising? And should we be more careful when the claims an ad makes has potential health consequences for children and communities?

Let’s ask newspapers that question about big adverts they’ve printed from Generation Rescue, an autism advocacy group, the one headed up by Jenny McCarthy, who regularly appears on National TV claiming vaccines cause autism.

The ads, which you can see on the Generation …

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Anti-vaccine ads, and how false advertising harms children