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How To Improve Access For The Poor: Allow Physicians To Deduct Uncompensated Care From Their Income Taxes?

As we wrestle with political factions and mull over assorted ideas for reforming health-care in America, one simple solution bears discussion.  Of course, we notoriously hate simple solutions.  The modern American solution to simple solutions is to develop layers of complexity and inefficiency.  I can only assume that in government, as in hospital administrations, this has to do with creating jobs.  To the extent that it keeps nefarious, clever individuals off the street and occupies them in what passes for gainful employment, I applaud the effort.  But it seldom solves problems, and typically creates them.

Nevertheless, I digress.   My painfully simple solution is this.  Allow every health-care provider to deduct, from their federal income tax, the care they provide for free to uninsured patients.  It can be the Medicare value of the care; possibly even the Medicaid value.  But in the end, a financially savvy doctor, dentist, therapist or any other health professional will end up paying no income tax. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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