The Health Care Blog

Welcoming immigrants and robots to fill the nursing shortage

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS In a report this week, Nursing crisis looms as baby boomers age, CNN Money repeats a well-known story: there are unlikely to be enough nurses to take care of people as they age. Nursing schools can’t...

Making A List and Checking It Twice

By MERRILL GOOZNER Allow me to call readers attention to an article in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that calls on medical specialty societies to make lists of the five most wasteful practices in their...

A Randomized Trial of Niceness in the ER and Other Stories

By BOB WACHTER One of the great joys of a life in academic medicine is the opportunity to work with lots of very smart people. But one regret is that there is something about academia that tends to homogenize –...

The Coming Clash over "Cadillac" Plans

By MERRILL GOOZNER Now that the Senate has passed its version of health care reform along partisan lines, let's look ahead to the single biggest issue that will draw the most heat in conference: The tax on so-called "Cadillac plans,"...

Is it Unconstitutional to Mandate Health Insurance?

By MARK HALL Is it unconstitutional to mandate health insurance? It seems unprecedented to require citizens to purchase insurance simply because they live in the U.S. (rather than as a condition of driving a car or owning a business, for...

Voters Want Abortion-Neutral Health Care Reform

By MARK MELLMAN A few months ago, I warned that some folks were attempting to misuse healthcare reform to restrict access to abortion. They have come a long way since then, endangering the vital struggle for healthcare — indeed, torpedoing...

States Should Have Flexibility to Develop Own Health Reform Plans

By MAX BARTLETT and JOSE AGUILAR One issue has generated little discussion during the heated health care reform debate: whether states should have the right to develop their own approaches to universal coverage. The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign...

As I've always suspected, Health Care = Communism + Frappuccinos

By Matthew Holt Nothing new today from me, but if you're stopping by THCB looking for some post-Xmas inspiration, I thought you might like this essay I'm rather proud from back in THCB's past (back in the dark days of...

Senate passes bill, more to come

By Matthew Holt It's Christmas Eve and the Senate just passed a major health reform bill. Personally I think the reforms in it are relatively minor, but the passage of the bill itself is a screaming big deal. When I...

Why buy insurers stocks, When the Obama health bill would bankrupt them?

By DONALD JOHNSON On Monday, liberals sneered when insurers' stocks rose, indicating that speculators thought ObamaCare (HR 3590) would be good for the big regional companies. But today several of the stocks are sinking, probably in response to University of...

How Will the Senate Bill Impact the Insurance Companies and Their Customers?

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI How will the Senate bill impact health insurance companies and their customers? Even better, how will it impact a not-for-profit health plan--one with a reputation for being a "good guy" that continually wins the country's top awards...

2009 Homeless Gift Guide

By DOC GURLEY This time of year, no matter what your worldview, religion or culture, it's hard, as you hurry past the homeless huddled on the street, to not feel like Scrooge. Whether you're taking your family to the Nutcracker,...

Why Health Care Reform Is So Difficult in the United States

By HUMPHREY TAYLOR, Chairman, the Harris Poll, Harris interactive Why is it so hard to change the American health care system? And so much easier to change other countries’ systems? I pondered this question recently while attending the Commonwealth Fund’s...

Coal in Your Christmas Stocking?

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI Is there anyone left, on either side of the political spectrum, who wants the Senate health care bill to pass? Republican Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour had this to say about the Senate bill last week, “This health...

Enthoven beats up Gawande

By Matthew Holt I finally got around to reading Atul Gawande's New Yorker piece on why the current reform bill mirrors early 20th century agriculture. I learned lots about the role of the Department of Agriculture in teaching farmers what...

Virtual Medicine: The Lever That Just Might Save Independent Practice

By RICHARD REECE Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, I can single-handedly move the world. -- Archimedes Independent medical practice in America is in trouble. It is fragmented, with some 900,000 doctors – 300,000 primary...

Interview with Alan Greene MD, author Raising Baby Green

One of the most remarkable talks I heard this year wasn't about health care. It was about food. Of course, food is very, very closely related to health and health is at least tangentially related to health care. So I...

Cool Technology of the Week

By JOHN HALAMKA John Halamka is the CIO at Beth Israel Deconess Medical Center and the author of the popular "Life as a Healthcare CIO" blog, where he writes about technology, the business of healthcare and the issues he faces...

Senate Deal on Health Care Bill Done

By Matthew Holt As it's a work day for the Senate worth reporting here that Ben Nelson’s vote has been bought for more Medicaid spending for Nebraska and a complex formula for States to opt out of exchanges being able...

Kate's Counterpane

A wonderful sad and happy story about someone who never thought disease could happen to them. (It's relatively long and plays in sections or you can go to the original site) From a system/policy perspective, the role of complementary and...

Interview with Paul Taylor, renegade hospital CEO

By Matthew Holt Paul Taylor is CEO of Ozarks Community Hospital, a teeny 2 hospital system catering to the poor and senior populations in rural Missouri and Arkansas. He thinks that he's figured out a way to deliver health care...

Health 2.0 Does Webinars

By Matthew Holt I'm excited to announce the latest program coming from Health 2.0 - The Health 2.0 Show with Indu & Matthew! This monthly webinar series will focus on news from the Health 2.0 community, a look at some...

Health Reform as Theater: Let Me Down Easy

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON For a Broadway stage, the set is simple and spare – a long, white leather couch, a handful of wooden tables and chairs. No ornamentation is needed; the stories being told on the stage are what...

Improving the Harvest: Farming and Health Care

By Bill Kramer I love Atul Gawande’s writings on health care. He has a rare talent for describing technical details of health care, insurance and finances in terms that most people can understand. His recent article in the New Yorker...

MedEncentive's Five Year Report

By Matthew Holt As many involved in the worlds of Health 2.0 and Information Therapy know, some of the most interesting experiments in the world of patient-physician engagement have been happening in the somewhat unlikely environs of small town Oklahoma....

Joe is kicking them when they're down

By Matthew Holt From a deeply depressing survey of the unemployed in today’s NY Times: Nearly half of respondents said they did not have health insurance, with the vast majority citing job loss as a reason, a notable finding given...

There Be Dragons: The Fiscal Risk Of Premium Subsidies In Health Reform

By JEFF GOLDSMITH Last week, the Congressional Budget Office weighed in on the biggest economic imponderable in the health care debate: how private health insurance premiums will behave under health reform. Building on its December 2008 CBO health insurance market...

Health 2.0 in Europe: Couldn't? Wouldn't? Does!

By Denise Silber They said it couldn’t happen in Europe, that social media and online tools wouldn’t catch on, because the healthcare context was soooo different from the US. They said that Europeans don’t worry about access and cost, that...

The one hundred-- a Boston Cancer Fundraiser

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center opened nominations for its annual gala honoring those who have stood out in the fight against cancer, the one hundred. Each year, one hundred people from all walks of life are...

Better Care Through Clinical Trials

By DOUGLAS W. BLAYNEY, M.D. Amid hundreds of amendments offered in the health care reform debate, there is a non-partisan, non-controversial gem that will both help patients and speed the search for new cures to deadly diseases. Senators Sherrod Brown...

Your Money or Your Wife

By JD Kleinke Talk about perfect timing. Just as the last “death panel” falsettos fade into the droning no-government- takeover chorus, along come those “faceless government bureaucrats” from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force to stop the music in the...

Senate Compromise on Health Care Reform: Political Genius?

By JOE FLOWER Democrat Roland Burris, the sudden senator who replaced Barack Obama in that august body, has now joined those who are pledging to filibuster any bill that does not have a "public option" – joining of course those,...

Convergence and the Death of the Public Option

By TIM GREANEY So maybe the two parties are coming together on health reform after all. Last night we learned that after days of “secret talks” among the “gang of ten” the Democrats have reached agreement to restructure their health...

Making (sh)it up as they go along

By Matthew Holt So today’s news is that the gang of ten have come up with something. (If you haven’t been following along, the gang of ten are the five “liberal” Democrats and the five DINOs asked by Harry Reid...

Pelosi’s Hidden Tort Bomb -- an Alternative View

by Charles Silver & David A. Hyman We once thought Democrats would accept tort reform to win Republicans’ support for national health care legislation. Now, however, Democrats have dispensed with bipartisanship. Perhaps they think they can ram health care legislation...

Abortion Should Not Imperil Health Care Reform

By Melissa Reed

 The House vote to establish near-universal health-care coverage came at a steep cost to women. That cost, issued as an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), eliminates abortion coverage by private insurance companies even when women are...

Genetic Testing, Fact or Fiction: You Be the Judge

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Which of these two events is fact and which is fiction? Organizations representing employers and health plans call for a moratorium on implementation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, asserting that the new rules could have a...

Spotlight on Health 2.0: Clinical Groupware from SF '09

Every week we bring you a video from the world of Health 2.0. This week we're featuring a clip focusing on Clinical Groupware and the Next Generation of Clinician-Patient Interaction tools, as seen on stage at our latest conference in...

2009: A Year of Surprises and Change for the EHR Technology Market

By DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER

 

 2009 began with a bang for legacy Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors, promising strong sales and windfall profits on the heels of stimulus package incentive bonuses initially worth more than $19 billion...

Four grumpy lefties with Laura Flanders

By Matthew Holt Maggie Mahar, Jon Cohn, Jon Nichols and Olga Pierce hang out with Laura Flanders on the amusingly titled GRITtv and discuss how screwed up the politics of health care are in the Senate. Twenty minutes of amusing...

Health Journos Protest FDA Interview Rules

By MERRILL GOOZNER The Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and 9 other scribbler groups have asked the Food and Drug Administration to lift its requirement that agency officials first get permission from the public relations...

Pink Glove Dance

By Matthew Holt (Stolen direct from and Hat-tip to MrHIStalk) this is fabulous. It’s a fund raiser for Breast Cancer awareness done by more than 200 doctors, nurses, lab technicians, administrators and kitchen and janitorial staff from the Providence St....

Why Wait Four Years?

By PAUL LEVY I was struck during President Obama's health care speech before Congress several months ago that the reforms he advocates would not go into effect for four years, until 2014. This timetable, too, is written into both the...

The Patient Safety Movement Turns Ten

By BOB WACHTER On December 1, 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report entitled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Although its authors hoped to spark a national movement, they had little cause for optimism. After...

The Leaning Tower of Jello: Why No-one Believes Health Reform will be Deficit Neutral

By JEFF GOLDSMITH President Obama has promised not to sign any health reform legislation that increases the federal deficit. This promise recognized rising public concern about an Argentinean fiscal trend that, unchecked, could leave us with $19 trillion in federal...

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Death by a Thousand Cuts

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report today saying that if the Reid bill becomes law, the price of non group policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than it would...

Paul Starr agrees with me (or I steal from him--take your pick)

By Matthew Holt Paul Starr and I have been agreeing a lot lately. Not that Paul knows or cares what I think or say, but a while back we both expressed fear that private health plans will end up channeling...