Category: Policy

Want to find the best doctor? Don’t rely on price tags.

Say you want to know which baseball players provide the most value for the big dollars they’re being paid. A Google search quickly yields analytics. But suppose your primary care physician just diagnosed you with cancer. What will a search for a “high …

The rent is too high in health care

Jimmy McMillan might have been right. Mr. McMillan ran for mayor of New York City as the founder and candidate of the “Rent Is Too Damn High” Party. And while he was talking about real estate rent, he might have made a similar complaint about health ca…

For future physician-activists: This is our lane

Rudolf Virchow, a pioneering physician of the 1800s, once wrote that “politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale”. Over a century later, this nexus is as apparent as ever, and many doctors engage as practitioners of both. Twitter erupted this pa…

Health care workers and administrators aren’t rowing in the same direction

My wife and I once canoed across a glacial lake. There were twelve people in our 30-foot canoe. To reach the shore of the Mendenhall Glacier, we had to paddle two miles across a lake. All twelve of us had to paddle together to reach the shore. But what…

Medicare for all and the problem of health care on demand

The evolving politics of single-payer health care conflate the concepts of universal coverage, health care on demand and free health care. To the indiscriminate progressive mind, all three are part of the holy grail. The fly in the ointment is that hig…

Physicians are now lab rats

Pay for performance (P4P) is all the rage in health care. Big Pharma led the way, and the popular press would have you believe that one can “incentivize” physicians and their clinical colleagues with as little as a sandwich and a bag of chips. Corporat…

#MeToo: A culture change is needed in health care

This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com. The #MeToo movement exploded into the national spotlight in October 2017 with The New York Times exposé of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood media mogul Harvey Weinstein. It has since encour…

Instead of Medicare for all, how about Medicare for more?

Medicare for all is one of the leading campaign issues among the Democratic presidential candidates. Michigan Rep. John Conyers first introduced the idea in Congress in 2003. It went nowhere, but as the one-time party of JFK morphed into something much…

Non-medical transportation for postpartum moms is a necessity

This past June, California’s Department of Healthcare Services went live with the implementation of its non-medical transportation (NMT) benefit. NMT is described by the National Health Law Program as “transportation provided to access medically necess…

A student doctor says, “Time’s Up”

According to the NASEM report, half of women medical students experience sexual harassment before they start their careers as physicians. The numbers are even higher for people belonging to minority groups. This harassment is generally overlooked and t…