Throughout my career, I’ve contemplated what it means to be a good doctor. While I still cannot fully articulate it, I know a good doctor when I see one. She’s the masterful diagnostician who can solve any medical mystery. He’s the ph…
Category: Public Health & Policy
Stop penalizing physicians with pay for performance
Throughout my career, I’ve contemplated what it means to be a good doctor. While I still cannot fully articulate it, I know a good doctor when I see one. She’s the masterful diagnostician who can solve any medical mystery. He’s the ph…
Why this doctor decided to run for political office
The practice of medicine is limited by what we can control. As students, we are taught to believe in the power of science, the importance of hard work, and the momentum of technological advancement as prime determinants in our patients’ outcomes. Howev…
Why this doctor decided to run for political office
The practice of medicine is limited by what we can control. As students, we are taught to believe in the power of science, the importance of hard work, and the momentum of technological advancement as prime determinants in our patients’ outcomes. Howev…
Corporate games have ruined the health care system
There are certain paradoxes of life that are beyond the realm of rational explanation. To me, one of such is that a country that figured out how to defy gravity and conquered the cosmos has time and time again proven to be incapable of taking care of t…
To err is human, to empathize is to heal
Empathizing with others’ suffering is one of the most human expressions in life. For empathy to nurture, like any other emotion, it needs time and space, and in none other professions, this maxim is codified as profoundly as in medicine. Even in …
The sad demise of an idealistic family physician
Graduation from my residency program was a bittersweet experience. At the time, my specialty was suffering from a crippling job shortage, so our futures were uncertain, and a dark mood had come to permeate my radiology residency. We were disgruntled wi…
Is health care just legal human trafficking?
The standard business model around which our world revolves has no place in the “business” of human life, which is what the commercialized industry of health care has become. To be the most successful, businesses work to optimize profits by minimizing …
The hidden benefits of your health insurance plan can save your life
At kitchen tables everywhere, ordinary Americans have been grappling with the arcane language of deductibles and co-pays as they’ve struggled to select a health insurance plan during open enrollment season. Unfortunately, critical information that coul…
What is the Trump health plan for 2020?
The Republicans don’t yet have a health care plan less than a year before the 2020 elections. But based upon their 2017 Obamacare repeal and replace efforts, as well as a major document recently issued by the House Republican Study Committee, wha…
