Baseball fans like me take great joy in studying the way general managers assemble their rosters.
The variations are fascinating. Some teams focus on pitching strength. Others go for speed or power-hitting. Each approach carries distinct advantages and disadvantages on the field.
That same level of variation and strategic decision-making applies to health plans, as well.
With the health care marketplaces reopening for enrollment on Nov. 15, anyone evaluating their coverage options should take …
On September 28, 1864, the first meeting of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was convened at St. Martin’s Hall, London. Among the attendees was a relatively obscure German journalist by the name of Karl Marx. Though Marx did not speak during the meeting, he soon began playing a crucial role in the life of the organization, in part because he was assigned the task of drafting its founding documents.
Every year, ambitious students from around the world flock to America’s leading business schools, hoping to learn how to create new ventures that can change the world.
On the West Coast, situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business attracts budding entrepreneurs with challenging and practical programs. Courses like “Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures” and “Managing Growing Enterprises” encourage students to develop innovative business models that solve real …
Not accustomed to visiting hospital executive suites, I took my seat in the waiting room somewhat warily.
Seated across from me was a handsome man in a well-tailored three-piece suit, whose thoroughly professional appearance made me — in my rumpled white coat, sheaves of dog-eared paper bulging from both pockets — feel out of place.
Within a minute, an administrative secretary came out and …
While there are plenty of valid reasons to be skeptical about the Affordable Care Act, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s hard to argue that imposing an individual mandate to purchase insurance won’t result in more people obtaining coverage. According to the results of a recent survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that’s precisely what’s happened.
In health policy circles (yes, those exist!), experts often refer to three aims for a modern health care system: to offer 1) universal access to 2) high quality medical care at 3) an affordable cost. Access, quality, and cost: a possibly unachievable set of goals, certainly in the U.S., where the quality of our care is decent (but uneven), while access to care and the high cost of our care compare dismally to …
Recently, Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers told me that U.S. health care is at a tipping point. A positive one, he hopes, but the truth is no one knows for sure which direction the system will tip.
At the close of our interview, I asked Chambers what health care topic he’d like me to cover in the future. He asked me to …
The Canadian health care system is often held up as an example to model or to avoid at all costs in the debates on health care in America, and elsewhere. Yet there are a startling number of misconceptions — on both sides of the partisan divide — about how the Canadian health system actually works, often from experts who should know better. Here are the facts.
It’s been pretty quiet lately on the Obamcare front.
So quiet, that there has been a flurry of articles recently over how Obamacare has dropped to a second or even third tier issue and will hardly matter come election-time.
Wishful thinking.
Obamacare has largely been out of the news cycle for a couple of months but that is about to change.
A few thoughts.
The 2015 rate increases have been largely modest. Does that prove Obamacare …
A recent report from Rutgers University entitled “Unhappy, Worried, and Pessimistic: Americans in the aftermath of the Great Recession” found that 70% of respondents described the typical American worker as not secure in their jobs and 68% of workers are highly stressed. A quote from the study is, “The typical American worker lives in a precarious and doleful existence — unhappy, poorly paid and fearful of losing his or her …
1. Most physicians are intellectually gifted and therefore rarely make mistakes. Perhaps Hollywood is to blame for this misconception, or maybe we simply find comfort in believing that exceptionally brilliant diagnosticians abound. Either way, I wish it weren’t a myth. But the truth is that the vast majority of physicians are average in virtually every way. Despite all claims to the contrary, …
This month, the American College of Physicians’ Board of Governors (BOG) will meet in Chicago. One of the items on the agenda is the discussion of resolutions that will help to shape ACP policy. The resolutions process, which looks at proposed policy changes and directives to …
Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, a cardiologist, believes with good reason that many physicians have become “like everybody else: insecure, discontented and anxious about the future.” In a recent, widely-circulated column in the Wall Street Journal, “Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession,” he explains how medicine has become simply a job, not a calling, for many physicians; how their pay has …
Helping employees improve their health is right for the company’s bottom line and is doing right by our employees. Healthier employees are happier, demonstrate less absenteeism and presenteesism, and are more productive. This is a win for everyone involved.
– John Torinus, Jr., a retired CEO and current board chair of Serigraph, Inc., a mid-sized Wisconsin company with about 500 employees
A recent report from the Commonwealth Fund, which placed U.S. last amongst developing nations in health care, analyzed Britain’s high score on the management of chronic conditions. The authors attributed care coordination to the widespread adoption of health information technology in the National Health Service (NHS).
That’s like someone saying Chinese food is tasty because chopsticks are widely used.
Like quants so fastidious about decimal points they’ve missed the overall point.
The recent disagreement between Uwe Reinhardt and Sally Pipes in Forbes is a teachable moment. There’s a dearth of confrontational debates in health policy, and education is worse off for it.
Crux of the issue is the more efficient system: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) or Medicaid. Sally Pipes, president of the market-leaning Pacific Research Institute, believes it is ESI. Employers spend 60% less than the government, per person: $3,430 versus $9,130, …
You know it’s going to be one of those days when one of the first tweets on vacation inquires about the closest hospital.
Victor, one of my 11-year-olds, had something in his eye courtesy of a big gust of wind outside of Westminster Abbey. He was complaining enough to let me flip his eyelid and irrigate his eye on the square in front of Big Ben. (I’m sure several people thought …
“We lost our regular doctor with Obamacare, so now we have to see you.”
I routinely ask my new patients how they heard about our pediatric office, and this is the answer I dread most. My pediatric practice is a very nice and modern private office, and in my opinion, full of excellent physicians. I entrust my own children’s care to my partners. But none of that matters when you’re the rebound doctor, the …
In a previous post, I described how the American health care system is morphing into a system designed to service impoverished populations, and concluded that the transition “will take time, thoughtful planning, lots of innovation and a carefully cultivated disdain for human life.”
However, a new blog post from Dr. Peter Ubel makes me think that it may not take that much time after all. It seems that Dr. Ubel …
The unrelenting opposition by American conservatives to Obamacare may have the unintended consequence of leading the United States to a single-payer system like Canada’s.
How’s that, you say? Isn’t the whole point of conservative opposition to Obamacare to drive home the point that the government is incapable of managing people’s health care? Yes. And aren’t conservatives effective in driving home that point? Yes, polls show that confidence in government is at …
