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Health Reform: “Compete And Succeed” Or “Repeal Or Replace?”

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) thinks so. So does Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). And Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Senators Brown, Wyden and Sanders have introduced the “Empowering States to Innovate Act.” Ezra Klein blogs that the Senators may have found a way forward on health reform.

“If a state can think of a plan that covers as many people, with as comprehensive insurance, at as low a cost, without adding to the deficit, the state can get the money the federal government would’ve given it for health-care reform but be freed from the individual mandate, the exchanges, the insurance requirements, the subsidy scheme and pretty much everything else in the bill,” Ezra Klein writes. “If conservative solutions are more efficient, that will be clear when their beneficiaries save money. If liberal ideas really work better, it’s time we found out. Forget repeal and replace, or even reform and replace. How about compete and succeed?”

The Wonk Room reports that Wyden, Brown, Sanders, who co-sponsored the original innovative waivers amendment, believe that their home states of Oregon, Massachusetts, and Vermont are leading the pack in adopting innovative approaches. These include the well-known Massachusetts program that Brown voted for as a state legislator, and single payer bills that have been introduced in Vermont and Oregon. The bill, though, also could appeal to states seeking a more conservative, less regulatory solution, since they would be able to decide how they wanted to provide comprehensive coverage to the uninsured, free of most of the mandates of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

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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