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Choices, Stick-Chasing, And Finding Joy

One late afternoon, some summers ago, I was at the beach.

I was with our dog, a Labrador retriever.  He was playing fetch with a stick I was throwing into the ocean.  Every time I threw it, he darted into the ocean to find it.  Swimming through the waves, he would get the stick and carry it

back proudly to shore.  He would drop it in front of me, shake off some of the water soaking his coat, and stare at me, heaving, begging me to throw it in again.

We did this for a while, and it was always the same.  He was joyous.  Eventually I had to stop, even though I loved

seeing him that way.  He would have kept doing it until he drowned.

I realized something else as I was watching him.

He was so happy because jumping into the North Atlantic to retrieve things is what he was born to do.

Now, people are much more complicated than dogs. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Brown And Healthcare: Massachusetts Isn’t An Emerging Conservative State

I’ve lived in Massachusetts almost my entire life.  So, like everyone else, I was surprised by last night’s stunning election results.  To think, in Massachusetts we elected a Republican to serve out the rest of Ted Kennedy’s term.  It’s one of the few times where I would say it’s possible that a dead man is actually rolling in his grave.

The explanations – coming mostly from out-of-staters – are already coming in.  Coakley was a bad candidate.  Brown worked hard and showed he wanted it more.  It’s the economy.  These are all reasonable, and probably true, but I think they miss what the election was really all about. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Saving Billions On End-Of-Life Care: Another Mirage?

“We can no longer afford an overall health care system in which the thought is more is always better, because it’s not.”  – Peter Orszag

Could anyone disagree? Not really.  Which ought to be the first clue that it’s a meaningless truism.  I mean, of course more isn’t always better.

But this hasn’t stopped this truism from becoming one of the most popular refrains in health care reform.  Most of the time this is directed at one area:  end-of-life care. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Warning: Graphic Health Politics

A friend sent me this interesting graph from the blog of the National Geographic.

You’ll have to click on it to see a bigger version.  It captures a lot of data very elegantly on a single graph–  Professor Tufte would love it.

What it shows is health care spending per person across a group of countries, along with life expectancies, average number of doctor visits per year, and whether a country has a system of universal health coverage.  Although putting all of this data on one graph is novel, the graph makes what by now is one of the oldest political arguments for reform – for all the money they United States spends on health care we don’t get a good deal.

So why blog about this graph? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Is Lack Of Kindness The Greatest Barrier To Healthcare Reform?

Ancient people couldn’t understand why solar eclipses happened, so they looked for explanations that fit what they saw:

A recurring and pervasive embodiment of the eclipse was a dragon, or a demon, who devours the sun. The ancient Chinese would produce great noise and commotion during an eclipse, banging on pots and drums to frighten away the dragon.

They weren’t crazy, although if we accept their explanation, their solutions seem pretty illogical.  I mean, would a dragon big and powerful enough to eat the sun really be scared away by people banging on pots and drums?

I guess I don’t understand the skittishness of giant sun-devouring dragons.

But this the trouble.  When you come at a problem with a faulty premise — and insist on keeping that premise — it leads you down some very strange paths. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

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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