Category: Public Health & Policy

Who are responsible for outrageous medical bills? Hint: It’s not doctors.

Over the last few years, there has been a slew of articles about patients receiving surprise bills after ER visits. One woman was charged $5,751 for an ice pack and a bandage. An infant was charged $937 for an antibiotic ointment. Who sends bills like …

Reclaiming the future of health care

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. Although I work for the American College of Physicians, I’m writing this as a general internist who has practiced both primary care and hospital-based medicine for over 25 year…

Why doctors should get political

I became a physician to help people. So isn’t fighting for issues that help protect my patients such as racial equality, LGBTQ rights, gender pay equity, access to health care, and education all part of patient care? Don’t my patients want …

Health insurer: I want my 8 hours and 6 minutes back

February is a short month. Even this year with leap day. So short. Maybe that is why I am so mad at what Company X did to me. My health insurance company stole eight hours and six minutes from me in February. I will never get it back. This is my story …

Health care and sick care are interchangeable

Does anyone really want health care for all? I promise this is not a political rant. Americans, of any political persuasion, should not be misled by the implications of health care for all: It does not mean medical care for all. Providing a card statin…

Gun violence requires medical intervention

109. This is the number of people who died each day from firearms in the U.S. in 2017, the most recent year for which the CDC has published data. It is a staggering number, one that deeply damages the fabric of communities and tears families apart. Wha…

Supporters of Obamacare should consider this Trump proposal

Readers of my articles know that no one has been more critical of Obamacare’s flaws––particularly over the impact the program has had on middle-class consumers in the individual health insurance market. And, readers already know that no one has b…

Urgent care is emblematic of problems in our health system

 Working in urgent care, I’ve started supervising some of the other providers at sites other than my own — 19 sites in all in Pennsylvania and Delaware — so I hear about a lot of patient situations. The urgent care site where I work i…

The impact of economic inequality on the incidence of mass shootings

Gun violence has become a public health epidemic. Despite countless deaths in mass shootings over the last two decades, the Dickey Amendment—a provision inserted into the 1996 spending bill which blocked federal funding for research on gun violence—rem…

5 disruptive trends transforming health care

Spiraling costs, poor quality outcomes, and inequities in access to care are driving significant and long overdue changes to the way health care is administered and managed in the United States. And while the U.S. spends more on health care per person …