Public Health & Policy

Patients over paperwork: Medicare has delivered lower costs and regulatory relief for health care providers

Policy

October 28, 2020

The COVID-19 public health emergency has highlighted that government rules and regulations should not hinder providers from delivering high-quality care to patients. The Trump Administration exhibited an understanding of this principle long before the pandemic when it announced the Cut the Red Tape initiative in 2017. With a healthcare system marked by $200 billion in annual administrative costs that contributes to higher costs for patients and …

Do police officers get jaded over time, just like a lot of physicians do?

Karen Tran-Harding, MD

Physician

October 26, 2020

For many years and in disturbing frequency over the past few years, police brutality has been a big-ticket issue. The excessive use of force has led to innumerable acts of civil rights violation and, most tragically, the disproportionate death and destruction of innocent Black lives. There have been many debates on what to do to change law enforcement culture. But what has been weighing on my mind is …

Why socialized health care is not right for America

Mary Tipton, MD

Policy

October 9, 2020

I have been a doctor for twenty years, but I’m also a patient. We are all patients. This summer, my previously mild heart rhythm problem got a lot worse. By July, I was having frequent episodes of heart rates four times normal, causing me to almost lose consciousness. It was dangerous and scary. I consulted with a highly specialized doctor to fix this for good. He threaded four wires …

Why are so many community hospitals transferring children to larger facilities?

Christopher Johnson, MD

Policy

September 13, 2020

A recent edition of Pediatrics has some disturbing research: “Trends in Capability of Hospitals to Provide Definitive Acute Care for Children: 2008 to 2016.” What the paper really does is document what many of us who work in referral hospitals have noted for some time: More and more community hospitals are transferring children who appear in their emergency departments to other, larger facilities instead of admitting them to …

Why doctors should be trained to speak out and lead the movement for social justice

Teshamae Monteith, MD

Policy

September 7, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Health Director of Allergy and Infectious Disease and White House Coronavirus Task Force member, recently underwent surgery to remove a vocal cord polyp. This is not surprising given that a major risk factor for developing vocal cord polyps is overuse of the voice, something Fauci has likely experienced during the COVID19 pandemic as he has been called upon to speak …

How I was wrong about health care

Robert Yoho, MD

Policy

September 5, 2020

An excerpt from Butchered by “Healthcare”: What to Do About Doctors, Big Pharma, and Corrupt Government Ruining Your Health and Medical Care.

Doctors help patients, and they love us for it. We fix bones, replace joints, cure killer infections, and control diabetes with insulin. We use painless …

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How I was wrong about health care

Why is the government so scared of directly negotiating drug prices?

Robert Laszewski

Meds

August 29, 2020

President Trump recently signed two executive orders directly related to prescription drug prices in the U.S.

One order would allow the “reimportation” of prescription drugs from Canada. This longstanding idea would allow U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers the ability to pay generally much lower prices for their prescription drugs by getting them from Canadian suppliers who benefit from government management of the system. Many consumers have been buying direct from Canadian …

What happens if you are both too rich and too poor for health insurance?

Vincent Fussell, MD

Policy

August 15, 2020

After being kept up all night responding to pages, I was still half-asleep walking into Mr. Jenkins’ room for what I thought would be a routine early morning admission for new-onset seizures. From scanning through the electronic medical record, I was not expecting to encounter the unfortunate and complex array of social factors underlying his condition.

Mr. Jenkins was in his late 20s and had three children to take care of. …

The future of whole-person care: high-tech holistic medicine

Trisha Swift, DNP, RN

Tech

August 8, 2020

When we think about holistic medicine, many assume that it requires human-to-human touch points and, therefore, doesn’t lend itself well to technology and innovations such as artificial intelligence. In fact, holistic medicine and whole-person care advocates often view technology as manufactured or impersonal and therefore dismiss its utility for health care. This is because there is a perception that health care tech values the human experience only for the purpose …

There is endless profit potential to treat chronic diseases

Hans Duvefelt, MD

Conditions

August 8, 2020

I have noticed several articles describing how antibiotic development has bankrupted some pharmaceutical companies because there isn’t enough potential profit in a ten-day course to treat multi-resistant superbug infections.

Chronic disease treatments, on the other hand, appear to be extremely profitable. A single month’s treatment with the newer diabetes drugs, COPD inhalers, or blood thinners costs over $500, which means well over $50,000 over an effective ten year patent for each …

Declaring racism as a public health crisis from the lens of two Latinx student doctors

Yesenia Salazar and Camila Hurtado

Policy

July 15, 2020

“I often heard as a child that Mexicans were lazy and dirty. As a Mexican-American, I did not wear shorts for years despite the heat because I thought my knees looked dirty. Now I fully embrace my identity. However, as a medical student, I still feel the pressure to disprove these stereotypes.”
– Camila Hurtado

“Growing up in the barrio, my white classmates would tease and bully the brown Latino kids constantly. …

Uninsured medical students are at risk

Zannah Herridge-Meyer, Melanie Langa, and Kelly Stewart

Policy

July 14, 2020

During clinical training, medical students worry about caring for patients, learning how to do procedures, memorizing drug interactions, and documenting their work in the electronic medical record —they shouldn’t be worried about paying medical bills at the same time. Shortages of personal protective equipment and the subsequent dangers of working in health care permeate the news and threaten our ability to overcome the COVID pandemic. However, there is another often-neglected …

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Uninsured medical students are at risk

The uncertainty of an international medical graduate during the COVID-19 pandemic

Juan J. Delgado-Hurtado, MD, MPH

Policy

July 13, 2020

A quarter of the physician workforce in the United States consists of international medical graduates (IMGs). This year 4,222 non-U.S. citizens matched in first-year residency positions. I am an IMG from Guatemala, where I completed medical school. In March of 2014, I matched to an internal medicine residency in the United States. The road has been both satisfying and challenging, with all kinds of uncertainties. I have always been attracted to …

Immigrant physicians: Acknowledge our privilege and move to action

Toyin M. Falusi, MD

Policy

July 12, 2020

Born in the United States of America to Nigerian parents, I was raised in Nigeria and returned to the U.S. after medical school for residency training. I have practiced medicine in Chicago, IL for 25 years, and like many others, have had to deal with microaggressions and racism within and outside the workplace. However, this article is not aheabout outlining my personal experiences. This is a call to action to …

3 reasons why doctors don’t unionize

Baird Brightman, PhD

Policy

July 10, 2020

In a market economy, business leaders take every opportunity to shrink the cost line of labor on the balance sheet to boost profits and shareholder/investor value. It’s the metric on which they are evaluated, and left unopposed; they will do it more and more.

The core strategy for shrinking labor costs (along with automation and offshoring) is to drive increased “efficiencies” by demanding more and more work from the same number …

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3 reasons why doctors don’t unionize

I always hope that a sense of humanity will supersede the status quo

Erica Jaclyn Mark

Policy

July 9, 2020

I look out at the world through bright blue eyes. Blonde hair. A skinny but shapely 19-year-old’s body. I know six languages. I am educated. I can prescribe medicine that saves lives. I am in love. I am a person.

I look down at the tattoo on my arm. A number— like cattle. My family is gone. My home destroyed. I am living in a small room— …

Minorities and medical research: Who is still excluded?

Katie Kinsella and Ximena Verduzco-Villanueva

Policy

July 6, 2020

In the United States, there is clear evidence that minority populations continue to be underrepresented in clinical research related to new therapies for common and serious long-term medical conditions such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). This is despite these same populations facing a continuing and disproportionate burden of T2D, which shows no signs of abating.

Black people have one of the highest rates of T2D (13.2 percent), a rate almost twice …

Primary care is dying: Why that should scare every large employer

Elizabeth Mitchell

Policy

July 6, 2020

Primary care is on life support. COVID-19’s toll on American health care extends beyond the hospitals and medical workers besieged by infection. An equally insidious but less-visible crisis is engulfing primary care, the long-neglected foundation of our health care system. Given the role of America’s largest corporations in providing health care benefits, the C-suite should be on high alert.

As growing numbers of patients postpone appointments over concerns about …

A graduation speech to a residency class

Deborah Edberg, MD

Physician

July 4, 2020

I feet truly honored to have been asked to speak at your graduation and to have a chance to share on this day with all of you. We are experiencing a truly singular moment, and I imagine you are hoping that I might say something that would be comforting or inspiring, and I really can’t think what that could possibly be.

For the last half of your third year of residency, …

COVID-19 is a grim reminder of my roots

Josh Budhu, MD

Physician

July 4, 2020

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic gripped New York City, I have come to dread calling home to my parents. Every conversation ultimately leads to the question: “Is everyone okay?” This is always followed by a pause as my parents consider how much to tell me. Over the past few months, I learned on an almost weekly basis of a new family member, family friend, or neighbor who was hospitalized, transferred …

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COVID-19 is a grim reminder of my roots