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 […]

Is Big Change Coming? Jake and Kamala (& Michael and Howard)

Mike Magee The decade long battle by Republicans to “repeal and replace” Obamacare is fading slowly into the background. But as this week’s dust up, ignited by CNN’s Jake Tapper’s probing of Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s views on Medicare expansion revealed, we still have a long ways to go. By the next morning, two of […]

Public Opinion on Health Reform is Moving left for both R’s and D’s.

Mike Magee If there is a face for a “compassionate capitalist”, many would drop in the wise visage of Warren Buffett who famously declared “Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness.” Others have stated it differently while agreeing with results of the 2018 Bloomberg health efficiency index placing the U.S. dead last. The […]

Should U.S. Presidential Candidates be Drug Tested?

Mike Magee During a nationally televised speech last week on border security, the airwaves lit up. But the discussion was not limited to fact seekers by now well accustomed to counter-checking the President’s deliberate misrepresentations. Joining in were health professionals and addiction experts who literally counted the number of Trump sniffs that became prominent half […]

American Health Care’s New Year’s Resolution: Confront The Lie.

Mike Magee On the last day of a rather disastrous 2018, the Washington Post ran the headline, “Our agents did everything they could.” The article captured the performance of Kevin McAleenan, head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection defending his agencies oversight of the death of a second migrant child in the week after […]

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