Picking Up The “Single Payer” Baton From Ady Barkan.

Mike Magee The Politico headline in 2019 declared dramatically, “The Most Powerful Activist in America is Dying.” This week, 4 1/2 years later, their prophecy came true, as activist Ady Barkan succumbed at age 39 to ALS leaving behind his vibrant wife, English professor, Rachael King, and two small children, Carl, 8, and Willow,4. His […]

Trust Versus Secrecy – TSMC vs. Pfizer in Pandemic Times.

Mike Magee This week’s Tom Friedman Opinion piece in the New York Times contained a title impossible to ignore: “China’s Bullying Is Becoming a Danger To The World and Itself.” The editorial has much to recommend it. But the item that caught my eye was Friedman’s full-throated endorsement of Taiwan’s “most sophisticated microchip manufacturer in […]

Lundberg’s Words: “System-shaking, even convulsing.”

Mike Magee Last week, Medscape’s editor-at-large, George Lundberg, wrote, “In 2017, I published a Medscape column that asked, “How many books will it take?” listing several titles that were intended to provoke repairs or rebuilds. Still nothing happened. Then came COVID, adding massive insult to injury of our already overpriced, overworked, bloated, inefficient, ineffective megalith […]

Could Bezos and Amazon Help America Build An Accessible, Affordable and Effective National Health Care System.

Mike Magee This past week I spent an hour with THCB’s Matthew Holt and Jessica DaMassa discussing everything CODE BLUE – how and why it came to be, and where it directs us as Covid-19, global warming, and rising income inequality bear down on our nation. In the final ten minutes of the THCB Book […]

ACA – A Ticking Time Bomb For Republicans.

Mike Magee Watching the Amy Conan Barrett hearings last week, I couldn’t help but wonder who exactly was running the Republican Death Star at the moment. Specifically the Supreme Court candidate’s vulnerability based on an outspoken disdain for the ACA seemed to release a quiet, below-the-surface, Democratic scream “Go ahead. Make our day!” For nearly […]

Covid-19 and The Collapse of the Medical Industrial Complex: Imagining a Brighter Future.

To our surprise, this online lecture explaining the birth of the Medical-Industrial Complex in America, and how it planted the seeds for the current pandemic disaster, maxed out its Zoom capacity within minutes of its offering. That left many of you in the lurch, and for this, we apologize. But the good news is, we […]

Covid-19: A Wake-Up Call For Those Not Yet Woke.

Mike Magee Exactly one year ago, I penned a piece for Matthew Holt’s The Health Care Blog titled, “All For One, One For All.” In laying out our vulnerability, I wrote: “The U.S. has no government-directed, national health planning apparatus. Service levels and reimbursement vary widely across an endless array of private and public offerings […]

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