Public Health & Policy

Profit motive in medicine: lessons from private detention

Physician

May 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, 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 …

How cross-sector collaboratives cut health care costs

Christine Schuster, RN, MBA

Policy

May 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 …

Why health care accountability demands system readiness

Tiffiny Black, DM, MPA, MBA

Policy

May 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 what if the more important question is not what went wrong, but what was already known?

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

Physician

May 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

Policy

May 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

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Physician

May 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 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 …
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The administrative burden crushing California medicine

How gold cards can drive California pain management reform

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Policy

May 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 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 …
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How gold cards can drive California pain management reform

Why clinical ethics and medical law demand your attention

Daniel Sokol, JD

Conditions

May 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 from daily practice.

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

Physician

May 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

Policy

May 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 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 …

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

American College of Physicians

Physician

May 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 Read more…

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

Uber’s personal injury lawsuits split doctors and lawyers

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Physician

May 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 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 …

Bridging the health equity gap with artificial intelligence

Judith Eguzoikpe, MD, MPH

Policy

May 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

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Policy

May 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 …

Your waiting room does what social media cannot [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

May 5, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

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 …

How medical misinformation drives demand for nonscientific treatments

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

Conditions

May 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

Policy

May 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 …

Why Kennedy’s addiction treatment plan raises ethical concerns

Gary McMurtrie and Abhijay Mudigonda

Policy

April 28, 2026

The current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has consistently captured public attention with his actions and rhetoric, but one aspect of his public health agenda that has received comparatively little scrutiny is his proposed reconceptualization of addiction treatment, undergirded by his support for and stated intent to emulate Patrignano. Patrignano is an addiction treatment program in Italy where people who use drugs (PWUD) participate …

Preparing for Medicaid cuts and the imperial health boomerang

MarkAlain Dery, DO, MPH

Policy

April 24, 2026

I first met Ramon in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when I was moonlighting in local ERs and assisting wherever needed. New Orleans has a long-standing historical and economic connection to Honduras, primarily through the banana trade and shipping routes linking Honduran ports to New Orleans. These routes facilitated both commerce and migration between the two. Ramon, whose family has deep roots in both Honduras and New Orleans, arrived here …

I have cerebral palsy and I’m a doctor. Here’s what policy cuts mean for patients like me. [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 20, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

What happens to patients with disabilities when the government signals their lives don’t matter, and what does that mean for the doctors fighting alongside them? Ashna Shome, a pediatrics resident with cerebral palsy, …

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