How Healthy Is Your State And Our Nation?

Mike Magee The wire release of America’s Health Rankings®, a state by state assessment compiled by the American Public Health Association and supported by the United HealthCare Foundation, summed it up this way: “Overall Healthiness Slightly Improved, but Obesity, Children in Poverty, and Diabetes Worrisome for States’ Health….reductions in smoking, preventable hospitalizations and infectious disease […]

What Do Steve Jobs, The NEJM and 18 to 29 Year Old’s Have In Common?

Mike Magee Change is never easy. It always involves breaking through the status quo which of course holds on for dear life. But trend lines sooner or later do force adjustment. This is becoming more and more obvious in health care, troubled with high costs, variable quality and a fundamental locational disconnect – placement of […]

Could Don Berwick Use Medicare To Test Linking Medical Liability Reform To The Patient Safety Movement?

Mike Magee Despite all the progress in scientific research and technological advancements, at its core, health care remains a huge and complex human endeavor struggling for perfection. How huge? 900 million office visits and 35 million hospital discharges per year.(1) How complex? Complex enough to have spurned a massive defensive and litigious malpractice system whose […]

The Impact of Global Warming On Health: An Endless Summer Ahead?

Mike Magee In 2009 President Obama joined other global leaders in New York City for the Opening Session of the UN. One of the transboundary issues discussed was Global Warming. All agreed that the Kyoto Protocol had failed. It failed because the target to decrease emissions by some 5% was too low. It failed because […]

Childhood Vaccinations: You Can’t Let Your Guard Down.

Mike Magee As the recent outbreak of whooping cough in California illustrates, ensuring population wide immunization remains an uphill battle. The story of childhood vaccinations, at least in the developed world, is a remarkably successful one. With the development of vaccines, many childhood diseases have become extremely rare, and the health and well-being of millions […]

“Race to the Top” for Health Care: Who will be our Arne Duncan?

Mike Magee MD In July, 2009, as the battle remained fully engaged on a legislative fix for health care reform, a very different approach to educational reform was announced in Washington. The United States Department of Education released the draft priorities, requirements, definitions and selection criteria for the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant […]

Healthcare Reform: Too Big To Fail

Eric Dishman Rumors of the demise of healthcare reform have been greatly exaggerated. After Scott Brown’s upset victory for the Massachusetts Senate seat, the news media and blogosphere are abuzz. Ah, folks, we have ourselves an official media frenzy! Let the hyperbole begin: “The world has changed,” “Everything is different […]

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