The Health Care Blog

PODCAST: David Gratzer transcript

Here’s the full transcript from the David Gratzer interview—if you prefer the podcast version I’ve linked to it here. There are lots of comments there too. Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt, and we're back with another podcast on the...

BLOGS/TECH/QUALITY: HealthTrain, the Open Healthcare Manifesto

Yesterday saw the official launch of HealthTrain, the Open Healthcare Manifesto. Dmitriy Kruglyak has been working on this for some time with a large group of collaborators, and I have joined several others to sign on. The manifesto lays down...

QUALITY: Does DM save money? The old chestnut rears its ugly head

Poor Chris Selecky of Lifemasters. I had a brief chat with her at a DM conference in August and she was heading to the beach (happily) after selling the company to Healthways. Or so she thought. But then that merger...

TECH: Bizzare data theft headline

If you read this headline, what would you think was going on? Perot Systems Walks Off With Indiana Hospital's Patient Data The story is that an employee of Perot which runs the IT systems for Sisters of St. Francis (a...

QUALITY/TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Don Kemper, CEO of Healthwise

Don Kemper from HealthWise essentially invented the concept of information therapy--the idea that every contact between patients and the medical system should come with an actual prescription for information. I think it's an incredibly important concept, so I talked with...

TECH: The best treatments for heart disease?

I’d never heard of EECP as a treatment for heart disease. Apparently it works, according to this UCSF analysis. But Debra Braverman’s letter to the NY Times says it all (other than mistaking the drug industry for the medical device...

THCB: It's a big month here!

Judging by my sitemeter October will blow any other month out of the water for traffic here on THCB with more than 25,000 visits and on the way to 50,000 page views. Part of the reason is the exposure we...

POLICY/POITICS: A Grim Anniversary

A Grim Anniversary: 20 years ago today possibly the worst single bill ever passed by the US Congress went into law. In the the hysteria over crack cocaine and the death of basketball star Len Bias (not from crack by...

POLICY/THE INDUSTRY/HEALTH PLANS: Employers trying to be not so dumb

This is definitely one to watch. With help from THCB buddy Brian Klepper, the employers in Reno are interested in becoming smarter purchasers, and they held a forum without letting any plans or providers in the room. The results suggest...

PHARMA/POLICY/POLITICS: More rational behavior from big Pharma

Exactly as happened in 2000, and 2002 a late surge of money is coming to help Republicans from the PACs of New Jersey’s finest. According to a report published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, drug-industry dollars are helping to...

POLICY/POLITICS: Uwe gets a job

Apparently New Jersey is going to rationalize its health care system. Well at least they put the best guy in charge. New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has announced that Uwe Reinhardt, the Woodrow Wilson School's James Madison Professor of Political...

PODCAST/POLICY: A frank exchange of views with David Gratzer

So I tried really hard to be nasty to David Gratzer. I’ve complained bitterly on THCB about his op-ed posts which I think just misrepresent Canadian and American health care, and I still think that his book The Cure misrepresents...

TECH: ePrescribing update

I wrote a brief piece for the newly renamed Digital Healthcare and Productivity on ePrescribing. Don’t get too carried away by the headline in the piece—I did know about Surescripts before this week! But while the dog-food has now been...

POLICY: Pat Salber is now a prevention hawk

Is this the dawning of the Age of Prevention? Pat Salber hopes so. Link should be fixed now.

POLICY: We need health cost containment before fixing the payment method , by Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman is a retired business owner from Wisconsin and founder of Throw the Rascals Out. He’s become a frequent commenter on THCB, oddly enough as a Republican voter who is in favor of single payer, and I thought that...

PHARMA (well sort of): Jim Edwards having a little too much fun

Jim Edwards of Brandweek has been writing about “Bob” the (fictional) recipient of the Enzyte male enhancement pill (John Mack likes Bob too!). As you might have guessed, the pills a crock and the company behind it is a bunch...

PHARMA/POLICY: Price negotiations coming?

Joe Paduda is puzzled that drug company prices and profits are going up, yet the NY Times thinks that we can’t get a better deal on drug prices for Medicare. But in some ways that’s a little irrelevant, as the...

TECH: Avatars, and the Metaverse

I have been struggling with the new attention on online virtual worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc, etc. I think that there’s something here that’s more than games. But I can’t quite tell what yet. And if it’s...

TECH: Stents, apparently overused to be replaced by better ones

Here’s the article from the NY Times confirming that drug-eluting stents are being used less since the recent findings of increased risk over bare-metal stents. But now stent sales are falling and some doctors are rethinking their faith in the...

POLICY/TECH: Free International Calls! NOT Too Good to be True

This is damn interesting, about how modern technology is perverting an old world subsidy. Free International Calls! NOT Too Good to be True. I guess at some point this is what’s happening in pharma and may happen in surgery. Of...

HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS: Maverick pulls hosptials out of HMOs

This medical maverick, (or that’s what the paper’s calling him) owns three hospitals in The OC (California) and has cancelled all his HMO contacts—going after Medicare patients and charging HMOs and PPOs full fare for those admitted via the ER...

QUALITY/POLICY: The Scourge of Skid Row

This is very, very unpleasant. A staph infection outbreak in Los Angeles that’s got its own name— the Scourge of Skid Row. And it’s one reason why public health, including the real basics like housing, clean water and access to...

POLICY: Six Dirty Little Health Care Secrets

I’m up at Spot-on talking about Six Dirty Little Health Care Secrets. Comments back here if you like…. With no lurid sex scandal this week and apparently little public interest or Congressional caring about what's going on overseas, ABC News...

PBMs: Cynics patrol

Late last month Jack Bruner joined PBM Caremark Rx as VP of Marketing. What was he doing before? He was head of Hewitt's Global Health Care Practice. Who’s Hewitt? It’s one of the biggest benefit consultants in the world. What...

POLICY/POLITICS: New York Times, dogs, pustilent sores, licking of.

After the previous three times, I don’t think I can bear it. This time David Leonhart has written a NYT article saying that the reason we spend more here is because of American culture. This may be the most moronic...

POLICY: Healthcare Economist on P4P

And via HWR, young punk Jason Shafrin, at the Healthcare Economist has a just excellent article about why P4P isn’t enough and impicitly why we need budget and supply constraints to get health care costs under control. (Hint, it isn’t...

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review

Health Wonk Review is up at Ezra Klein’s blog.

HEALTH PLANS: Blue Cross Settling Patients' Lawsuits

Lisa Girion in the LA Times has had no small part in the story she reports today. Wellpoint’s Blue Cross unit is settling the patients' lawsuits against its rather nasty habit of widespread retroactive cancellations. The settlement cannot have been...

POLICY: Communism breaks out on ABC news (well apart from Stossel)

Even though I’m “starring” on their site I can’t say I’m a regular viewer (or actually ever watch) ABCNews — unless it’s being replayed on The Daily Show or Colbert Report. But I’ve been watching some of the videos, and...

POLITICS: Beyond belief!

I used to have a joke game called the “who’s Denny Hastert” game. Essentially none of my college educated friends in San Francisco and Silicon Valley knew who he was despite the fact that he was Speaker of the House...

POLICY: Spine surgery

I finally got to the article on spine surgery in USA Today. Exactly what you’d expect. Massive practice variation all over the place—although to be fair we’re not exactly sure that too much is bad here, as no one has...

PHARMA/POLICY: McLellan leaves offices with partisan and incorrect remarks about Part D

Someone should tell Mark McClellan that he was generally respected by everyone and that now that he doesn't work for the White House there's no need to become a Republican shill. But that's what he's doing by saying that Medicare...

POLICY/HOSPITALS: New Orleans health care, not rebounding

This is long but well worth a read. Modern Healthcare ran a roundtable on health care in New Orleans post Katrina with 2 health care execs and 2 consultants who did a study on the state of play. Essentially because...

POLICY: Demographics getting simpler and more complicated

So today is the day that the U.S. population hit 300 million which will make all those percentage divisions we’re always doing easier. But we’ve also seen unmarried households become a majority of the 110 million households, which confirms that...

PHARMA/POLICY: Crawford goes down

Small beer by the standards of this corrupt Administration (Halliburton anyone?) but given that former F.D.A. Chief Crawford is going down in a conflict of interest scandal, I can safely assume that at least one THCB reader is quietly smiling...

POLICY: Why Is Fixing American Health Care So Difficult?

ABC News is running a special on health care this week and they asked two bloggers to stick in our 2c. I'm up asking Why Is Fixing American Health Care So Difficult? David Williams from The Health Business Blog pens...

HEALTH PLANS: Wellpoint and United -- not much to be proud of...(with 12 noon EST UPDATE)

It is getting pretty difficult to find something nice to say about the nation's two largest health plans. Wellpoint's Blue Cross of California unit, already fined by the fairly tame CA Dept. of Managed Healthcare, is now being sued by...

POLITICS/PHARMA: Bush Aides Called Evangelicals 'Nuts'

Apparently Karl Rove and friends think that the religious right is nuts A new book by a former White House official says that President Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while embracing them in...

TECH: Stents and the lack of technology assessment in action

Newer Stents Pose Dangers, 2 Doctors Say. That would be the drug eluting stents, now racking up a $6bn odd in US revenue for their manufacturers. Well what did you expect? Oh, and by the way, still no evidence that...

INTERNATIONAL: Health care costs, and not just here!

I spent rather more than I’d like of my Thursday night writing a piece I promised ABCNews for their week-long series on the health care system that starts Sunday. As I was finishing up I saw this. It’s not exactly...

POLICY: Healthcare by Lobbyist By Eric Novack

Place this in the 'toot my own horn' category. And in the 'you really ought to listen to The Eric Novack Show' at www.ericnovack.com' category. From the Wall Street Journal October 10, 2006 edition: Competition is an issue that many...

POLICY: Aetheist pokes fun at religious institution not offering much charity

Yup I’m at up at Spot-on talking about the nun who lost her health insurance. It’s called Get cancer? Get fired, become homeless and lose your health insurance!. As ever you can come back here to comment. Here's to the...

INTERNATIONAL: More crass bureaucratic inhumanity in the UK's NHS

Just wait till Heritage/Manhattan/Cato find out about this!

PBMs: Some Employers Look to Break the PBM Habit

Earlier this week referring to the WSJ piece on PBMs (which one ex-reporter suggested to me was investigative journalism that pushed on open doors) I mentioned the University of Michigan which did the math and fired its PBMs, and is...

POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: More evidence that HDHPs work, by Eric Novack

Eric Novack has something to say about HDHP/HSAs, even more to say about who’s getting rich as a result, and little to mention about self-selection. But then I’m just a cynic. >A simply fascinating report has come from Aetna recently....

PBMs: Why I will stay poor forever

I just don’t understand Wall Street. The FirstDatabank/Mckesson story clearly was bad news for pharmacies/ PBMs are essentially big pharmacies and it was bad news for them as even your punk blogger here pointed out on Friday morning. But that...

OFF-TOPIC: The mental and social health of elephants

An Elephant Crackup? This is amazing and very troubling.

PHARMA/PBMs: How dumb is the customer? Barbara Martinez tells you the answer

Everyone knows that hospitals have a “list” price that only a very few totally powerless uninsured patients pay (and in California that hospitals are bizarrely required to report that price to the state). Then there’s an actual amount that Medicare...

PHARMA/POLICY: When off-label drug use attacks! (Pharma profits, that is)

The NEJM, in an article called The Price of Sight -- Ranibizumab, Bevacizumab, and the Treatment of Macular Degeneration catches up with a THCB contributor from 4 months ago. The issue is that Genentech has a new and to the...

BLOGS: Signs that health care blogging is dead, or about to become so

Both the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston and Health Affairs have blogs. Neither seems intent on publishing more than once a week, and neither asked me for consulting help about it! For Health Affairs you have to preregister...