Watch this video from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today. Rep. Bruce Braley explains why the bill under debate to make it harder for patients to win malpractice lawsuits won’t heal any of the medical industry’s troubles. And it certainly won’t help improve patient safety. These “reform” bills turn up like bad….
Continue ReadingHealth Care Reform
A Hidden Risk of Generic Drugs
If you suffer a terrible injury from taking a generic prescription drug, you have no legal recourse. So ruled the U.S. Supreme Court last year in a case that divided along political lines with five conservative justices throwing a new lifeline of legal protection to the generic drug industry. Now the consequences of that decision….
Continue ReadingHealth Savings Accounts for the Private Sector
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole culture to ensure adequate health care for all. One Idaho obstetrician recently explained to his state’s legislators how he thinks it can be done. Dr. Loel Fenwick, as reported by the Idaho Reporter, said in order to curb the rising cost of….
Continue ReadingInsurance Plan Puts Priority on Primary Care, and Patients Should Benefit
So much about the health insurance industry is wrong, so much compromises good care and patient safety, that when an underwriter makes the right decision it deserves attention. WellPoint Inc., according to a recent AP story, plans to boost primary care reimbursement and initiate payment for care management, a patient-protective practice it previously did not….
Continue ReadingElectronic Health Records Make Doctors Accountable — and Some Don’t Like That
Electronic health records (EHRs) hold much promise for reducing medical errors and improving quality of care, but the prospect that patient advocates can use EHRs to do an autopsy of where a patient’s care went wrong has some in the medical industry sounding an alarm. Last week a story (actually a press release, on closer….
Continue ReadingHealth Plan Model Disappoints
What is the essential core of a health insurance policy that every insurer should have to offer its customers? The federal government is struggling to come up with a definition, but it’s proving to be not so easy. Most people know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health reform plan that was passed in….
Continue ReadingMinnesota Tells Dangerous Doctors: We Won’t Punish You
It’s been known for a while that Minnesota ranks dead last in the nation in the frequency with which its doctors are disciplined by the state licensing board for harming patients. Now we know why. A new investigative series by the Minneapolis Star Tribune has some dizzying quotes from state officials who are charged with….
Continue ReadingRick Santorum’s (and the GOP’s) Damage Cap Problem
Rick Santorum is not the first politician to be caught in a “Do as I say, not as I did” moment. So when it came out this weekend that Santorum had asked for more damages in his wife’s medical malpractice lawsuit than the legal limit he would like to impose on all malpractice victims, it….
Continue ReadingDoctors Consider the Cost of Effective, Appropriate Health Care
Somewhere between scary false terms such as “death panel,” voiced by opponents of the Obama administration’s health care reform (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), and the truly scary increase in the cost of health care lies a reasoned, enlightened conversation about what is appropriate care, and what it costs. Often, the last people to….
Continue ReadingPoll Shows Strong Support for Health Insurance Transparency
The Obama administration’s effort at health-care reform-known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA-has an image problem. Virtually every poll asking Americans what they think of its provisions demonstrates not only widespread disapproval, but widespread ignorance. Some pundits attribute our collective misunderstanding to the administration’s inept efforts to publicize the program’s features, some attribute it….
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