The Road to Universal Coverage

Mike Magee New York Times columnists. Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll, provided a genuine public service this week in offering an interactive exploration of universal health care. Readers were asked to react to the same questions presented to a bevy of health gurus. Their 5 “Yes or No” questions were: 1. Do you support automatic […]

The Planetary Patient

Mike Magee In 2005, I published a book called Healthy Waters in an attempt to raise environmental health and the deteriorating “planetary patient” as a pressing health care issue. My efforts were only modestly successful. Chapter 8 in the book was titled “Natural Water Disasters” and summarized the costs in human life and fortune as […]

“blank”…. FOR ALL.

Mike Magee In a Washington Post interview this week, Rep. Donna Shalala, former head of HHS and now a member of Congress from Florida, suggested that democratic reformers focus on universal coverage by whatever means possible. In her view, this includes opening up voluntary access to Medicare (50+), Medicaid (more liberal entry standards), employer based insurance […]

Dr. Ralph Northam and the Culture of Forgiveness

Mike Magee Within 24 hours of the airing of Governor Ralph Northam’s 1984 Yearbook page last week, commentators were discussing the implications of his history of racial bias on his performance as a physician. Second year psychiatry resident Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu asked in STAT this week, “Why are we less forgiving of Ralph Northam as […]