Posts tagged as:

Obama

When political discourse is like borderline personality disorder

October 7, 2009

by Marya Zilberberg, MD, MPH
When I was a kid in Odessa my Dad and I went to see The Sound of Music at least 17 times in the span of 3 months. Remember that song sung by the nuns when Maria is late for the vespers, “How do you solve the problem like Maria?” One [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Analysis of the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill

October 3, 2009

Originally posted in MedPage Today
by Emily P. Walker, MedPage Today Washington Correspondent
The Senate Finance Committee finished work on its healthcare reform bill in the wee hours of Friday morning, paving the way for a committee vote next week.
After considering hundreds of amendments, the committee is now waiting for a cost-estimate from the Congressional Budget [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

The left, right, and health care reform poetry

September 29, 2009

by Richard Reece, MD
Into the valley of health reform
Bestrode the one hundred senators.
Comprehensivists to the left,
Incrementalists to the right.
Squarely in the middle sat the arcane,
Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine.
Bespoke the comprehensivists.
It must be done all at once.
Evoked the incrementalists.
No, it must be done one at a time.

1 comment Read the full article →

Medical malpractice reform by President Obama and the White House

September 19, 2009

by Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
The White House today announced details of a $25 million grant program to test alternatives to the tort system for medical liability cases.
In his Sept. 9 speech before Congress, the president announced he would direct Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary, to launch pilot programs meant [...]

12 comments Read the full article →

Ten top medical blog posts, July 2009

August 16, 2009

Here are the top posts from the past month, based on the number of times they were viewed.
1. Did propofol, or Diprivan, kill Michael Jackson?
2. The AMA and Sermo break up, and how it’s getting ugly
3. Improve primary care access before guaranteeing universal health coverage, my address at the National Press Club
4. America’s failed attempt [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Rationing care is inevitable to control health care costs

July 8, 2009

Those on the left will pretty much sacrifice everything to attain their goal of universal coverage.
But, in this well-reasoned piece by conservative economist Tyler Cowen, expanding coverage won’t necessarily control costs, which is a more imperative issue. The bandied about means of cost control, such as electronic medical records, cutting provider payments, and preventive [...]

17 comments Read the full article →

Can the American Medical Association still be an influential voice in health reform?

June 29, 2009

The repercussions after Obama’s speech to the AMA’s delegates continue to be felt.
Not least of which are the murmurings of the other professional physician groups, who say that the AMA does not represent a majority of physicians. In this piece from pediatrician Rahul Parikh, he notes that about 30 percent of physicians are AMA [...]

9 comments Read the full article →

The biggest threat to President Obama’s healthcare reform efforts comes from his own party

June 28, 2009

I wrote back in February that one of the biggest threats to health reform was not from conservatives and the right, but from within President Obama’s own party.
Today, some four months later, the Washington Post reports that that’s pretty much what’s happening. In its report, the Post writes:
In the high-stakes battle over health care, [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Placebo Television gives another take on President Obama’s address to the AMA

June 24, 2009

Family physician Doug Farrago, of Placebo Journal fame, gives his take on President Obama’s speech to the AMA.

Read the full article →

Reflections from the AMA: President Obama’s Speech

June 21, 2009

The following is part of a series of original guest columns by the American Medical Association.
by J. James Rohack, M.D.
We have a historic opportunity for health reform this year and the AMA was delighted to welcome President Obama to our Annual Meeting in Chicago earlier this week. Like the President, we are committed to health-care [...]

Read the full article →

10 President Obama posts you may have missed

June 20, 2009

With entries dating back to 2004, here are 10 classic blog posts on President Obama:
1. How the primary care doctor shortage threatens Obama’s health reform plan
2. The Obama health care summit, and did the President offer any clues to the upcoming health reform effort?
3. Is Physicians for a National Health Program the biggest threat to [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

Physician malpractice deposition observations

June 19, 2009

Emergency physician WhiteCoat continues the chronicles of his concluded malpractice trial.
A recent episode focused on the deposition at the plaintiff attorney’s office. Along the way, there are observations on whether doctors with thick foreign accents make good witnesses (according to WhiteCoat’s lawyer, “juries are not very forgiving of foreign doctors”), or if the bathrooms [...]

22 comments Read the full article →

My reaction to President Obama’s speech to the AMA

June 15, 2009

I was seeing patients during the actual speech, so I had to rely on the transcript.
The points that interested me the most were any language pertaining to malpractice, addressing the AMA’s recent concerns about the public plan option, and reforming the physician payment system.
I think he did pretty well.
Regarding the physician payment system, he again [...]

78 comments Read the full article →

Is Obama serious about medical malpractice reform?

June 15, 2009

Or is it a red herring?
President Obama is making a much-ballyhooed address to the American Medical Association today (and will be live-Tweeted over at MedPage Today), and perhaps not coincidentally, there’s a piece in today’s New York Times saying that Obama himself is one of the few supporters willing to address the issue of malpractice [...]

11 comments Read the full article →

Maggie Mahar: Removing the hazardous waste from healthcare

June 8, 2009

The following is a reader take by Maggie Mahar.
Most of us are now familiar with the estimates that as much as one-third of our health care dollars are squandered on ineffective, often unnecessary, unproven and overpriced products and services. But which third?
The fat in our health-care system is not hanging out conveniently on the [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Will comparative effectiveness research really save money?

June 7, 2009

President Obama hopes so.
But, as Abraham Verghese writes, we can’t be so sure of that. The great cost-cutting hopes proposed by the government, which also include information technology and preventive medicine, all have very little data that show there will be any meaningful cost savings.
Are we focusing on the wrong things for cost control? [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries