Eisenhower to Biden on Health Care: “Enlarge the Problem.”

Mike Magee My good friend, Kim Bellard, in a piece published in Medium titled “The Eisenhower Principle”, shines a light on this genuine American hero’s seminal military, political and management insight – “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” In Kim’s astute health care analysis, he notes “We’ve learned only half of Eisenhower’s adage: […]

The Night Biden and Bernie Channeled FDR and MLK.

Mike Magee In my research up to last week’s speech on “The Right to Health Care and the U.S. Constitution” (transcript here), I came across this Emily Dickinson poem that could easily have been a forward looking tribute to two American Presidents – one from the 20th, the other the 21st century. Dickinson’s poem “A WORD […]

Words Matter in Health Reform: Part II – “Single Payer” or “Single Oversight”

Mike Magee In Part I of this 3 part series, “Words Matter”, we learned that the Canadian system is not technically a “single payer” system, in that provision of insurance (set to national standards) and the delivery of the care is the responsibility of individual provinces, not the national government. A more accurate label for […]

The Pharmacy Benefit Manger (PBM) Syndicate

Mike Magee “Syndicate: a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. In most cases formed groups aim to scale up their profits.” Drug channel companies including Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) (like United Healthcare’s Optum, Express Scripts and CVS/Caremark) and distributors (like […]

“Let’s Make America Healthy Again!”

Source: SSRS Mike Magee As the Democrats continue to angst over messaging and a platform to appeal to America’s middle class, the answer is staring them right in the face. A poll this week by SSRS made it abundantly clear. But before I go into that, let me provide a winning banner for the 2018 […]

The “Saskatchewan Experiment” – Informing California Health.

Mike Magee One of the driving misperceptions about the Canadian health care system is that it is a centrally run and directed delivery system, nationalized from start to finish, top down and authoritarian. That bias, reinforced actively in the U.S., is and has been inaccurate from the start. Understanding this bias could be useful as […]

Giving Up The Ghost: Republican State Legislators Begin To Acquiesce to Medicaid Expansion.

Mike Magee In a recent analysis of the U.S. and Canadian health care systems, two things were clear. First, Canada Health Care was planned, and our’s just happened. And second, both nations favored regional over federal delivery systems. In the U.S., that meant a strong bias toward state management, while in Canada the provinces and […]

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