Health policy and public health

Violence against doctors: 5 forces that ignite it

Timothy Lesaca, MD

May 30, 2026May 30, 2026

You might recall the 2002 film John Q., in which a desperate father takes a hospital emergency room hostage because his insurance company refuses to cover his son's heart transplant. It is a gut-wrenching depiction of medical rage. But now…

You might recall the 2002 film John Q., in which a desperate father takes a hospital emergency room hostage because his insurance company refuses to cover his son’s heart transplant. It is a gut-wrenching depiction of medical rage. But now looking back at that scenario from the vantage point of 2026, the moral direction of that anger feels fundamentally different from what physicians face today. John Q. was furious at …

Profit motive in medicine: lessons from private detention

Patrick Hudson, MD

May 27, 2026May 27, 2026

Who staffs the immigration detention centers, the temporary holding camps, the privately run facilities where thousands of frightened people are waiting behind fences and concrete walls? That is not a rhetorical question. It is a practical one. There are doctors,…

Who staffs the immigration detention centers, the temporary holding camps, the privately run facilities where thousands of frightened people are waiting behind fences and concrete walls?

That is not a rhetorical question. It is a practical one. There are doctors, nurses, administrators, guards, transportation workers, and contractors working inside these institutions today. Some believe they are helping under difficult circumstances. Others regard it as employment within a structure that continues because …

Real physician voices, twice a week

Free, and one click to unsubscribe.

Christine Schuster, RN, MBA

How cross-sector collaboratives cut health care costs

May 22, 2026May 22, 2026

Health care costs continue to rise, yet the conversation about why often feels like a loop. Hospitals point to insurers. Insurers point to hospitals. Pharmacy benefit managers cite manufacturers. Manufacturers point back across the system. Meanwhile, patients are left trying to make sense of bills that feel disconnected from the care they received. In Massachusetts, often viewed as a national model for health care coverage, the average total cost of …

Tiffiny Black, DM, MBA, MPA

Why health care accountability demands system readiness

May 22, 2026May 22, 2026

Most conversations about failure in health care begin in the same place: What went wrong? A patient safety event. A staffing collapse. A breakdown in communication. A system failure that appears, at first glance, to be sudden and unexpected. But…

Health care does not suffer from a lack of awareness. The signals are there: rising …

How civic engagement empowers health care workers

Stella Safo, MD, MPH

May 20, 2026May 20, 2026

For much of my career, I understood my responsibility in familiar terms: care for the patient in front of me, advocate for better health systems, and teach the next generation of trainees. I still believe that. But I now believe something else just as strongly: If we are serious about health, we cannot stop at the clinic door. We also have to show up in civic life and in the …

Health insurance coverage loss threatens sick children

Mansi Kotwal, MD, MPH

May 18, 2026May 18, 2026

In a group text with fellow pediatricians, I received a message asking if anyone knew where a child could get a blood draw that was not the emergency room. The question came from a colleague on behalf of another physician friend. She was worried her son might be anemic because of how he looked pale and was unusually fatigued.

She had just switched jobs and her son was not covered yet …

The administrative burden crushing California medicine

May 16, 2026May 16, 2026

Think of the entire health care system as a chess game where the goal is to achieve a healthier population by checkmating against the "darker side," which represents disease, poor outcomes, inefficiency, and the human suffering of untreated or delayed…

Think of the entire health care system as a chess game where the goal is to achieve a healthier population by checkmating against the “darker side,” which represents disease, poor outcomes, inefficiency, and the human suffering of untreated or delayed chronic conditions like pain.

The patient should be the king: The most important piece. Everything revolves around protecting and empowering them. Without the king (patients), the game does not

…

How gold cards can drive California pain management reform

May 14, 2026May 14, 2026

Key issues in California's health care system highlight some structural problems that hit patients, doctors, and communities hard. These aren't abstract policy debates; they are day-to-day realities in pain management, chronic care, and everyday practice. Core issues, which were pulled…

Key issues in California’s health care system highlight some structural problems that hit patients, doctors, and communities hard. These aren’t abstract policy debates; they are day-to-day realities in pain management, chronic care, and everyday practice. Core issues, which were pulled from the previously published articles, include but are not limited to:

Physician exodus and shortages: High taxes, aggressive board scrutiny, and a tough environment drive doctors out of California

…

Conditions and diseases

Why clinical ethics and medical law demand your attention

Daniel Sokol, JD

May 14, 2026May 14, 2026

Most clinicians give little thought to ethics and law until something goes wrong. This is understandable. They are immersed in concrete clinical tasks, ordering tests, reading reports, examining patients, and running clinics. Ethics can feel abstract and legal rules distant…

As an ethicist and trial attorney, I see the consequences of ethical error every week. They can harm patients, erode trust in the profession, and destroy promising careers. …

Health outcomes rely on more than just health care

Jalene Jacob, MD, MBA

May 13, 2026May 13, 2026

If the quality of health care was the only major determining factor of health outcomes, then the healthiest cities in the U.S. would simply be those with the best health care facilities. Recent national rankings of city health status, based on composite measures of health care access, food environment, physical activity, and built infrastructure, reveal a different reality. The cities that perform best are those where health is structurally …

A Medicare for All alternative that keeps insurers in

Ken Terry

May 12, 2026May 12, 2026

An excerpt from Beyond Medicare For All: Cracking the Code of the Healthcare Affordability Crisis. If our goal is high-quality, comprehensive, affordable health care for all, we must make health care less profitable. If health systems and corporations continue to…

An excerpt from Beyond Medicare For All: Cracking the Code of the Healthcare Affordability Crisis.

If our goal is high-quality, comprehensive, affordable health care for all, we must make health care less profitable. If health systems and corporations continue to control health care and their main goal is profit, health costs will continue to rise faster than the ability of society to pay, regardless of any reform efforts.

On the other …

American College of Physicians

Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style

May 12, 2026May 12, 2026

A position paper about using the term physician instead of provider? What does this have to do with biomedical ethics? I fully support calling ourselves physicians and not providers, and have been sensitive to this issue in part thanks to…

A position paper about using the term physician instead of provider? What does this have to do with biomedical ethics?

I fully support calling ourselves physicians and not providers, and have been sensitive to this issue in part thanks to American College of Physicians (ACP) President Emeritus Dr. Robert McLean’s call to action in his 2019 inaugural address. At first, I was puzzled that this became an issue for the …

Uber’s personal injury lawsuits split doctors and lawyers

May 9, 2026May 9, 2026

As a practicing physician who also specializes in caring for patients injured in motor vehicle accidents, I've seen firsthand how complex and emotionally charged these situations can be. Over the years, I've treated people with devastating, life-changing injuries from crashes,…

As a practicing physician who also specializes in caring for patients injured in motor vehicle accidents, I’ve seen firsthand how complex and emotionally charged these situations can be. Over the years, I’ve treated people with devastating, life-changing injuries from crashes, as well as those with subtler but still very real problems like persistent pain, spinal issues, or concussions that develop over time. At the same time, I’ve witnessed the intricate …

Judith Eguzoikpe, MD, MPH

Bridging the health equity gap with artificial intelligence

May 9, 2026May 9, 2026

Let us be honest about what is really happening: Automation is coming for medicine, and equity is still waiting in line. Across hospital systems, medical schools, and conference stages, a profession is holding its breath. The question consuming medicine right now is not about patients. It is about survival. About whether artificial intelligence (AI) will hollow out what took decades to build, whether the clinical judgment earned through sleepless residencies …

California’s governor race is missing a health care plan

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026

As California gears up for its gubernatorial primaries and debates, the familiar issues dominate the conversation: housing affordability, crime, taxes, and economic pressures. Health care surfaces, but rarely as a central priority with concrete, actionable solutions. Candidates offer broad strokes on affordability or protecting programs from federal changes, yet the crushing realities of escalating costs, physician shortages, regulatory burdens, and a system skewed against preventive, relationship-centered care receive little more …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Your waiting room does what social media cannot [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

What happens when patients from opposite ends of the political spectrum sit together in your waiting room and start talking like neighbors? Psychiatrist Farid Sabet-Sharghi explores why the medical office remains one of the last spaces where shared humanity overrides…

Listen on Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Listen and followApple Podcasts Spotify YouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

…

Conditions and diseases

How medical misinformation drives demand for nonscientific treatments

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

Not long ago, when the president announced that Tylenol caused autism, he commented that leucovorin, a cancer medication, treated the condition. It was disturbing to see the outsized impact the pronouncements of a nonscientist had on the public, despite counterstatements by autism scientists to the contrary. I can fully understand the response. What mother-to-be would take the chance, even if untrue, that Tylenol may cause autism? Or if parents have …

Why lung cancer screening needs urgent policy reform

Anuraag Balaji

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

The act of taking a deep breath is a simple, mindless reflex. However, for nearly 124,990 Americans this year, that same breath will become a reminder of a system that failed them. Currently, health care in the U.S. is viewed as a privilege, reserved for those who have the means to access it; it is no longer seen as a right. When it comes to lung cancer, our health …