What would happen to physician salaries if the United States adopted a single payer system?
The concept of a single payer system is a progressive ideal, and has been vociferously pursued by some left-leaning physician groups. For a variety of reasons, not least of which is the political climate in our country, I think the chances of single payer happening …
How not to convince doctors to embrace single payer
Yesterday was no different than many other days in my life as a consultant. Two clients, three cities, and finally arriving late evening at the hotel. It had been a long day of travel and I was looking forward to getting into my room and off of my feet. As I got onto the elevator, for some reason, the inspection certificate caught my eye and I felt compelled to read …
Is the health quality bar set high enough?
I have come up with the idea of the century. My idea will make your company the richest in the world while attracting millions of new patrons to your credit and debit card services. I don’t know why no one has done it in the past. It has made the insurers of America countless billions of dollars and now you can profit as well. My only request is that you …
Health insurers have come up with the idea of the century
“Do you know how many people died in car crashes in the United States in 2010? 32,000. That’s the lowest number since 1949. That’s impressive, but wait: It’s far more impressive than it sounds at first, because people in the United States drove about 10 times as many vehicle miles in 2010 as they did in 1949. In other words, if you drove a car or truck in 2010, you …
How health reform is like accident reform
It’s really quite an ancient debate: 400 to 500 years before the birth of Christ, on the island of Kos (home of Hippocrates) originates the myth of Aesculapius, god of healing, son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis.
As is not unusual in Greek mythology, Coronis meets a violent death, but the infant Aesculapius is saved. He is raised by a wise centaur, becomes skilled in healing arts, and succeeds in …
Implementing the Affordable Care Act will increase physician tension
It was 1967. I was an intern in the UCLA-Wadsworth VA Rotating Internship Program when I reported for my physical as part of the Berry Plan deferment. For the younger set, physicians and dentists could elect to delay military service until completion of their first year of residency training, and we could elect our branch of service we preferred to serve in. I chose the Air Force. On the History …
Adapting the medical home for cancer care
When I was a family medicine intern, I met a diabetic patient in the hospital who had stopped seeing his regular doctor after he lost his job and his health insurance. His untreated diabetes made his feet go numb. He stepped on a nail and didn’t realize it until he noticed a smell that cost him his foot.
He spent thousands of dollars on the surgery and subsequent hospital stay—far …
How Medicare undermines primary care
Health reform was supposed to have been good news for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Until 2009, this independent panel of federally-appointed experts in primary care and preventive health was not particularly well known, and its evaluations of the effectiveness of clinical preventive services had no binding authority on public or private insurance plans. Within the small circle of physicians and policymakers who were aware of the their …
How politics have weakened the USPSTF
Organized American medicine would like for physicians to “speak with one voice.”
If they could do so, and if that voice were in the public interest, not only in the self-interest of those physicians, it would be a very powerful voice indeed.
Arnold (Bud) Relman, the esteemed former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, once rightly told the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that physicians speak with many …
The interests of doctors and patients sometimes conflict
This year, total federal spending in the U.S. is projected to be $3.6 trillion. The top three budgetary categories are:
Medicare and Medicaid costs alone account for 23% of total federal spending.
If the magnitude of these projections does not alarm you, let’s look at it from a revenue perspective. This year, the total U.S.tax revenue is projected to be $2.2 …
Why physicians will be sacrificial lambs in future Medicare cuts
It is in this arena that the public treasury has been most abused by government ineptitude, institutional inertia and Congressional negligence. The waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid system is scandalous and is now the target of well-organized international crime. Estimations of the extent of this waste and fraud run as high as $150 billion.
The United States Government has done nothing to effectively stop it. Excuses run …
How basic healthcare can be provided to the truly needy
I usually write about healthcare reform from a pediatrician’s viewpoint, but what grabbed my attention recently was a story my husband, Randy, told me about an adult in his practice – a patient on Medicaid.
Randy is a neurologist in a private practice, and Medicaid patients come from every corner of Rhode Island to see him. They make this cumbersome pilgrimage because he is a member of a dying breed: …
Why cutting Medicaid will cost more in the long run
Someone has gone and rained the facts down on what is generally considered a feel–good story in American medicine, the dramatic increase in female doctors in America.
In response to Dr. Herbert Parde’s “The Coming Doctor Shortage” article in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Curtis Markel pointed out that there is a difference between the raw, gross number of physicians in America, and the effective number of practicing physicians. Not only …
Female doctors and the physician shortage
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We hear that doctors do not like “protocol medicine” – they do not want to follow a “cookbook” when every patient is different. It is not a good understanding of the issues.
Some years ago when I worked in a branch of he National Cancer Institute and then the University of Maryland Cancer Center, we admitted many patients with acute leukemia. The treatment approach including the necessary special tests to …
Why doctors should accept protocol medicine
When I was in medical school, we had a class on health economics taught by William Kissick. I didn’t pay as close attention as I should have (especially given what I do now). But I remember one thing he stressed. It involved the iron triangle of health care.
There are three aspects of health care systems that are essential: quality, cost, and access (thus the triangle). The problem …
Health reform and the iron triangle of health care
So, here we are, between a Medicare rock and budget hard place.
Costs are clearly a problem. Our healthcare system is the most expensive in the world. Take a look at the 2003 figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Per capita costs, in 2003, in the US were $3,394 above those of the UK.
We need to work on the costs. That’s clear.
But …
Doctors face difficult choices to save Medicare
There are two camps in America: those who think that health care is a right and those who think that it’s a privilege. Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but bear with me. Given these two respective positions, what are we to make of the health inequalities that are well documented in the United States? First, we must acknowledge that health is the product of multiple factors …
The public’s values of fairness in health inequalities
Imagine you have severe depression and go to a Boston emergency room for treatment. You are told to follow up with a psychiatrist within two weeks. You have good health insurance, so this shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Wrong. In a new study just published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, we found quite the opposite. Access to outpatient psychiatric care in the greater Boston area is severely limited, even for those with …
Banned in Boston: Access to psychiatric care
This post continues my Ten Principles of Affordable Healthcare Reform.
Health care changes should be made in small increments, easily understood by the People.
Any changes that are made should be made in small increments and they should be cost effective and easily accepted by the public. It is clear at this juncture that we cannot afford the breadth and the scope of “reform” that is being currently proposed; to …
Rationing is a logical outcome, and any changes must be incremental
So I have a Droid. I purchased it in July, not long after taking my old flip-phone for an oceanic bath at Hilton Head, SC. I waffled for a long time. In fact, I almost purchased a Casio phone that was marketed as water and impact resistant. “Mil-spec,” was the phrase used … a phrase which appeals to me as a one-time Air-Guard flight surgeon. What it meant to me …
The free market of smartphone apps can teach medicine a lesson
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