Health policy

3,432 articles · Since 2007

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the rules they practice under: prior authorization and the algorithms now deciding it, gold card laws, scope of practice and who may practice without supervision, Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, drug pricing, rationing that is done and not named, and the policies that decide which patients get care. Four maintained records draw on this archive: Prior authorization: what physicians say, in their own words, Scope of practice: what physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs say, in their own words, Race and medicine: what physicians say, in their own words, and Medical ethics: what physicians say, in their own words.

Latest articles

A stock market crash brings a second crisis: elder fraud

Gerald Kuo

November 6, 2026Nov 6, 2026

At a bank counter in central Taiwan, a man in his sixties tried to break a time deposit and withdraw 1 million New Taiwan dollars. He believed a stock-investment team would manage the money for him. Bank staff became concerned…

The disturbing detail was not the amount. Police had already intervened the previous week when the same man encountered a fraudulent investment scheme. The scammers contacted him …

Congress must act on workplace violence against nurses

Jennifer S. Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN

November 5, 2026Nov 5, 2026

In HBO's The Pitt, nurses are punched, grabbed, and choked while trying to care for patients. The scenes are fictional and dramatic, but they are not exaggerated. The physical danger nurses step into every single shift is painfully real. Across…

In HBO’s The Pitt, nurses are punched, grabbed, and choked while trying to care for patients. The scenes are fictional and dramatic, but they are not exaggerated. The physical danger nurses step into every single shift is painfully real. Across the country, nurses experience workplace violence with alarming regularity, facing physical assault, verbal abuse, threats, and intimidation from patients, family members, and visitors. Too often, this hostility is casually dismissed …

Why the best physicians admit diagnostic uncertainty

Tim George, JD

November 4, 2026Nov 4, 2026

"I don't know yet." They're only four words, but they may be among the most important words a physician can say. Most of us are uncomfortable with uncertainty, especially when our health is involved. If we've been living with unexplained…

“I don’t know yet.” They’re only four words, but they may be among the most important words a physician can say.

Most of us are uncomfortable with uncertainty, especially when our health is involved. If we’ve been living with unexplained pain, frightening symptoms, or a diagnosis we don’t fully understand, naturally we want answers. We want someone to tell us what is wrong and what happens next.

Doctors understand that desire. Good …

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Workplace violence in health care is a patient safety issue

Christi Barney, MSN

November 4, 2026Nov 4, 2026

Massachusetts lawmakers are now working to reconcile House and Senate versions of legislation that would require health care employers to develop and implement workplace violence prevention programs. It is an issue that those of us who have spent our careers…

I’ve been a nurse for a long time. Long enough to know that violence can happen quickly and unexpectedly, in the middle of caring for another …

Genetic screening should not wait for a health crisis

Keelee Moseley, MBA

November 3, 2026Nov 3, 2026

Pregnancy. Marriage. A cancer diagnosis. A sick child. A family tragedy. Too often, something must happen before we start asking what our DNA might tell us. It shouldn't. Genetic screening and education should become a more normal and accessible part…

Pregnancy. Marriage. A cancer diagnosis. A sick child. A family tragedy. Too often, something must happen before we start asking what our DNA might tell us.

It shouldn’t. Genetic screening and education should become a more normal and accessible part of preventive health care, available before a life event or health crisis makes the information urgent.

We already practice prevention. We check blood pressure before a stroke. We measure cholesterol before a …

Private equity replaced my anesthesia group. We can win.

Marco Fernandez, MD

November 1, 2026Nov 1, 2026

Every one of us learned the same lesson early: You cannot treat what you have not examined, and you cannot examine well without first taking a history. We diagnose and plan treatment from the history, the signs, and the symptoms.…

I believe the same is true of the system we practice in. Learning the history of our economics is as important as learning the …

Who should patients call about confusing medical bills?

Naor Jacoby

November 1, 2026Nov 1, 2026

A patient receives a hospital bill and does what every responsible article tells them to do. They check it. They see room charges, imaging charges, pharmacy charges, supplies, insurance adjustments, and a final patient balance. Some lines look familiar. Some…

A patient receives a hospital bill and does what every responsible article tells them to do. They check it.

They see room charges, imaging charges, pharmacy charges, supplies, insurance adjustments, and a final patient balance. Some lines look familiar. Some look duplicated. Some look excessive. Some may not even be bills, but explanations of benefits that look like bills.

So the patient calls the hospital and says, “This seems too high.” The …

Why payer contracting can no longer be a back-office job

Christine Mulheran

October 28, 2026Oct 28, 2026

Payer contracting has reached an inflection point. Although these contracts are the lifeblood of a health system, the managed care function is often seen as a routine set of transactional and administrative activities. Too often, these critical activities sit within an overwhelmed and under-resourced team that isn’t optimally connected with enterprise strategy. The result is that health systems are leaving significant value on the table by failing to capture the …

Medicare Advantage profits are speeding the collapse

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

October 26, 2026Oct 26, 20262

I receive emails from a senior citizen's organization urging me to sign a petition to protect Medicare Advantage (MA) nonmedical benefits. After reading and deleting the first one, I ignored subsequent ones for two reasons. First, since CMS, the federal…

I receive emails from a senior citizen’s organization urging me to sign a petition to protect Medicare Advantage (MA) nonmedical benefits. After reading and deleting the first one, I ignored subsequent ones for two reasons.

First, since CMS, the federal agency that administers Medicare, allowed private insurers to provide these benefits, their cost grew by over 800 percent. CMS intended these benefits to improve elder health, but this was not codified, …

Opioid settlement funds reward fewer pills, not less pain

Heidi Sykora, DNP

October 26, 2026Oct 26, 20262

Somewhere along the way, the patient stopped being the point. A patient who was stable A year ago this month, 74-year-old Martha was stable. She lives with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, degenerative disc disease, multiple joint replacements, and chronic anxiety. Even so,…

Somewhere along the way, the patient stopped being the point.

A patient who was stable

A year ago this month, 74-year-old Martha was stable. She lives with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, degenerative disc disease, multiple joint replacements, and chronic anxiety. Even so, she was functioning. Her pain was controlled on a low, unchanged dose of oxycodone that she had taken responsibly for more than five years.

At her annual visit, everything changed. Her primary care …

Doctor vs. physician and the El-Sayed licensing fight

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

October 26, 2026Oct 26, 20262

The halls of American power are currently experiencing a severe outbreak of semantic existentialism. We have reached a point in our political discourse where holding a degree from an elite institution is no longer a qualification but a linguistic trapdoor. If you have spent years collecting expensive, gold-embossed sheepskins but have not sat in a windowless room for three days to check boxes under the watchful eye of a state …

Surgery center profit margins were highest at nonprofits

Brian Hudes, MD

October 24, 2026Oct 24, 2026

A research letter published in JAMA Health Forum on September 25, 2026, examined the 2024 financial reports of 257 ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) in Pennsylvania. The finding was not what the usual debate over outpatient medicine would lead you to…

Nonprofit centers represented 20.6 percent of the facilities. They collected 35.8 percent of the revenue and earned 51.5 percent of the net income. Their median profit margin was 37.8 percent. …

Your teen is a safe driver. That doesn’t mean they’re protected.

Michael L. Saile Jr., Esq

October 23, 2026Oct 23, 2026

As the father of three active boys, including two teenagers approaching driving age, I know the day I hand over the car keys isn't far off. Right now, our days are filled with practices, wrestling meets, school activities, and the…

As the father of three active boys, including two teenagers approaching driving age, I know the day I hand over the car keys isn’t far off. Right now, our days are filled with practices, wrestling meets, school activities, and the constant shuffle of getting everyone where they need to be. Before long, they’ll be the ones behind the wheel, driving themselves to those same activities. Like most parents, I’ll worry …

Health care innovation is more than a new drug or device

Narinder Singh Parhar, MD

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 20262

For many people working in health care, the problems have become painfully familiar: the growing burden of chronic disease, physician and nurse burnout, shortages of adequately trained clinicians, rising costs, and dissatisfaction among patients and professionals alike. Together, these pressures can create a frustrating feeling that we have reached the end of the road. I believe we have reached a point that demands a change in direction.

We have extraordinary scientific …

Why the news ignores injuries to slaughterhouse workers

Martha Rosenberg

October 22, 2026Oct 22, 2026

The public did not hear about the worker walkouts at slaughterhouses in Greeley, Colorado, and Monmouth, Illinois, earlier this year for the same reason it does not hear about worker injuries in general in the plants. Heavy machinery combined with…

Heavy machinery combined with wet floors, sharp knives, and frenzied line speeds makes meat and poultry plants some of the most dangerous workplaces in the U.S. Across industries, an average of 27 …

Losing health insurance should not mean losing dignity

Katie Abbott, MHA

October 21, 2026Oct 21, 2026

At a recent health care conference, a panel of leaders gathered to talk about financial resilience. The framing was intentionally designed. The question wasn't "How do we save money?" It was "how to deliver the right care, at the right…

At a recent health care conference, a panel of leaders gathered to talk about financial resilience. The framing was intentionally designed. The question wasn’t “How do we save money?” It was “how to deliver the right care, at the right time, in the way that is most meaningful, so that outcomes change, health improves, and the total cost of care comes down.”

When the audience asked how social and structural drivers …

Why medical malpractice reform keeps dying in Congress

Howard Smith, MD

October 21, 2026Oct 21, 2026

I intend to prove four things: (1) The nation is at the tipping point of socialized medicine. (2) Medical malpractice lawsuits tip the scale. (3) Lawyers have their fingers on the scale and are to blame. (4) The American people…

The consequence of these four things is exemplified in 2017 with HR 1215, the Protecting Access …

Corporate greed in health care puts profit over patients

Narinder Singh Parhar, MD

October 19, 2026Oct 19, 2026

Money has become an increasingly dominant measure of success in modern society. Wealth, once considered a means of achieving security, independence, and a comfortable life, is too often treated as an end in itself. Nowhere is this transformation more troubling…

Over the past two decades, health care has attracted unprecedented interest from investors, private equity firms, corporate executives, and other nonmedical stakeholders. Some have brought valuable …

Why hospital metrics miss the patient who never returns

Gerald Kuo

October 18, 2026Oct 18, 2026

On October 15, I walked through a Taipei hospital with an international group of health professionals and an uncomfortable question I could not fit on a presentation slide: If our hospital becomes genuinely better at keeping people well, will our…

The visitors came from Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Somaliland, representing five countries or regions with different health systems. There …

Health care transformation can’t wait for the next crisis

Paul Dranichnikov, MD, PhD

October 17, 2026Oct 17, 2026

Health care has a problem that we rarely talk about honestly enough. It is not simply a shortage of doctors. It is not simply rising costs, longer waiting lists, an aging population, or the growing burden of chronic disease. The…

The deeper problem is that we are trying to run 21st-century health care on an operating system designed for another era. Our populations are living longer. Patients are more informed, more demanding, …

Health policy

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