Category: Public Health & Policy

Can the Inflation Reduction Act build back medicine better and reduce climate change? [PODCAST]

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! “There is great hope for this bill to accomplish the stated goals in the medical and energy worlds. There are many excellent summaries regarding this bill, and I would urge any intere…

Punishing doctors for spreading misinformation

When I was in high school, I read George Orwell’s 1984, a novel about a dystopian future where the government (a.k.a. Big Brother) monitors everything the citizenry says or thinks. Anyone deviating from government “doublespeak” is swi…

A Hungarian Jewish man’s fight for freedom [PODCAST]

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! “Despite the terror of the Soviets, it was clear that not even their mighty tanks could eradicate the social tides that now, like a tsunami, could not be turned back. The power of the…

Amazon, CVS, and Walmart are playing health care’s long game

In recent months, three of the nation’s largest retailers have stirred up a frenzy on Wall Street with a string of high-profile health care deals. Amazon bought primary-care company One Medical in early August for $3.9 billion. That was a month b…

The national strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health offers hope

The announcement of the Biden-Harris Administration’s national strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health is a critical step toward building a healthier nation. For the first time in half a century, the administration announced more than $8 million in p…

Gun violence during residency: Run. Hide. Fight.

I no longer react to the chiming from my phone when a push notification alerts me of another mass shooting. I have become numb to such alarms. Perhaps it is the increasing frequency of these alerts or a feeling of inevitability, made even starker by my…

The middleman mentality is killing American medicine

Between producers and consumers, you’ll find a cadre of professionals who broker deals, facilitate transactions, and move goods and services along. They’re called “middlemen,” and they thrive in virtually every industry — from r…

Practicing great medicine got a lot simpler. It’s health care that’s getting in the way.

We pay more than any other nation for health care, yet we have suffered the single biggest decline in life expectancy since WWII. Something went wrong. At a time of record inflation and rising taxes, isn’t it time we stopped to ask where the mone…

Next of kin in the medical decision making process

Four years ago, as chairman of the hospital ethics committee, I was asked to convene an emergency meeting brought by a distraught family as medical decisions had to be made for their ill loved one. The hospital, HMO lawyers, the family, three adult chi…

My motherland is burning, but patient care can’t wait

My relationship with my cultural identity has always been a complicated one. As many children of immigrants can relate, I often felt disconnected from my parents’ country of origin in an attempt to assimilate to American life. I was born in Manha…