Deplorable Conditions and “Deaths of Despair” Trap Trump Loyalists.

Mike Magee As the House leadership twists arms today, the noose is getting tighter by the minute around the necks of the most loyal Trump voting block – white males with only a high school education or less. As the twisted deliberations over a deeply flawed bill progress, Brookings is hosting the Nobel Prize winning […]

Canada vs. U.S. Health Care: National Governance Reform – HHS, FDA, NIH, CDC.

Mike Magee As we have seen, America’s health care system – disintegrated, opaque and heavily conflicted – didn’t just happen. It is the result of thousands of conscious decisions over nearly a century. Choices made have tipped the scale toward intervention, technology, and medicalization at every turn. Peggy Noonan suggested this week that Paul Ryan’s […]

Canada vs. U.S. Health – Report Card

Mike Magee In 2007, the Cambridge based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), self-defined as “the nation’s leading nonprofit economic research organization”, produced a singularly myopic white paper comparing the U.S. and Canadian health care systems. Noting that Canada is a “single-payer and mostly publicly-funded system” while the U.S. is a “multi-payer, heavily private system”, […]

AMA Signals Donald Trump (and Tom Price): “Enter At Your Own Risk.”

AMA member Tom Price The AMA took an unusual step this evening when it released the open letter below addressed to Congress, warning against removal of Obamacare without a suitable replacement. While addressed to Congress, the message is clearly intended for President-elect Trump, and secondarily to hard-liner orthopedist Tom Price. The latter has the support […]

Precision Medicine vs. Public Health $$$ – NIH Funding Priorities Not A New Debate.

Paul Starr, Princeton Paul Starr’s observations (The Social Transformation of American Medicine, p.370) in 1982: “In 1964 a Presidential Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke (the DeBakey Commission) which had been appointed at the behest of the Lasker lobby, recommended a massive commitment of federal funds to establish ‘a national network of regional centers, […]

The Three Pillars of the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Physician. Part 3. Rapid Cost Escalation.

VIEW ENTIRE SERIES Mike Magee As we have seen, by the time the 1990’s arrived, prospects for the premier academic health systems were looking questionable. The educational enterprise was increasingly underfunded. Inpatient reimbursement continued to decline alongside admissions and length of stay. The massive faculty hirings of the 70’s and 80’s now left the institutions […]

AMA Relieved

Steven J. Stack, MD President “The American Medical Association (AMA) is relieved that today’s Supreme Court decision will allow millions of patients to continue accessing the health care they need and deserve. “Physicians know that the uninsured live sicker and die younger so the AMA has been a leading voice in support of expanding health insurance […]

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