“The practice of medicine was accepted to be a chancy way to make a living, and nobody expected a doctor to get rich, least of all the doctors themselves.”  – Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science, p. 4 (Penguin, 1995 edition, quote via Google Books) Lost in the discussion of Paul Ryan’s “plan” is the group […]

Guest post by Michael Halasy Practicing Emergency Medicine PA, Health Policy Analyst, and Health Services Researcher Interstate Health Insurance Sales One of the more common ideas often thrown around in health policy is the idea of allowing patients to purchase health insurance across state lines. The idea of course, is to allow patients access to […]

As an extension of one of my posts, Global payment system, as the current buzz in healthcare reform, Michael Halasy points us to one of his choices for a plan. Guest post by Michael Halasy, Practicing Emergency Medicine PA, Health Policy Analyst, and Health Services Researcher Prometheus and Bundled Payments So, one of the more […]

by Daniel Becker I posted in 7/2009 on the issue of fixing our healthcare system based on the Massachusetts model. The first was Massachusetts is fixing the fixed healthcare system.   The second was a followup to the first:  Fixing the fixing. Healthcare Deja vu. The issue was that we are dancing around. All the proposals […]

by Mike HalasyHealthcare concultant and researcher, PA UPDATE: Part 1 here; Part 2 here. (h/t rjs in comments for the suggestion.)Update 2: Post fixed…Dan Medical Malpractice Reform: Truth in Advertising Needed (Part Three of Three) So in the first two articles we have addressed the historic effects of tort reform using Texas as an example, […]

Some catching up on health care reform progress makes sense as we keep in mind these posts from Beat the Press Dean Baker writes: Second, the story of massive huge future budget deficits has little to do with aging. It is a story of a broken private health care system. If the United States paid […]

by Michael Halasy Medical Malpractice Reform: Truth in Advertising Needed (Part Two of Three) So in the first article, we discussed the historical implications of tort reform by examining Texas. The take home message being that tort reform failed to curb health care spending, and/or control costs (outside of malpractice premiums which did fall). Proponents […]

Guest post by Michael Halasy, Practicing Emergency Medicine PA, Health Policy Analyst, and Health Services Researcher Medical Malpractice Reform: Truth in Advertising Needed (Part One of Three) Medical malpractice liability reform (Tort Reform) has been a hotly contested item for years, as the GOP, with physician support, has continued to market this as a health […]

I wasn’t going to mention Melissa Mia Hall’s death here—this is economics and politics, not sf—but now it is clear that, as usual, there is an overlap: If she had seen the doctor, most likely he would have suspected more than a pulled muscle and would have ordered a life-saving EKG. As Texas lawyer, writer […]

by Linda BealeHealth Care: The House’s Vote to Repealcrossposted with Ataxingmatter Well, they’ve done it. The House Republican majority pressed ahead with their repeal of health care reform, putting us (if their bill were to become law) right back in the mess of spiralling health care costs, tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and no […]