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The Quickest Win For Healthcare Reform: Say “Yes” To Drugs

Dear Mr. Obama and all of you congress folks:

I know you have been arguing about how to fix our system (and it really does need fixing).  I know there is not much you can all agree on.  I know it wasn’t all that much fun to face those yelling people at the town hall meetings.  The press hasn’t been nice, and the polls aren’t good either.  You guys are having a rough go of it.

So I am going to do you a big favor.

What you need right now are some quick wins – some things you can do that will make people happy quickly, and things that can be done without much cost.  This is low-hanging fruit that can be picked without a high ladder; it is fruit that will sweeten things and make swallowing the more bitter pills a little easier.  Here is what you need to do first:

1.  Allow Medicare Patients to Use Drug Discounts

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*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

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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