January 26th, 2010 by BobDoherty in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Brown, CNN, Democrats, Healthcare reform, Massachusetts, Monty Python, Next Steps, Not Dead Yet, Politico, Republicans, uninsured
1 Comment »
One of my favorite movie scenes is from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” when an unfortunate soul pleads with the designated collector of corpses (this being after the plague, mind you) that “I’m not dead … yet.” The collector responds by whacking him on the head … until he is, in fact, quite dead.
This scene comes to mind as I blog about yesterday’s stunning GOP upset of the seat-that-used-to-be-held-by Ted Kennedy. If the election of Republican Scott Brown didn’t quite kill off health care reform, some Democrats are quite willing to complete the task. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*
January 26th, 2010 by Stanley Feld, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Drop Medicare, Healthcare reform, Internal Medicine, Medicare, Payment, Physicians, Primary Care, Specialists, Stop Accepting Medicare
3 Comments »
President Obama’s Healthcare Reform Bill will not work. It is based on decreases in physician reimbursement while forcing physicians to increase overhead with unaffordable electronic medical records. More and more physician groups and practices are starting to realize that they cannot make a living from the reimbursement from Medicare. They are quitting taking new Medicare patients and trying to get rid of the old ones by not taking assignment.
President Obama’s idea is to force physicians to be more efficient producers. It is very difficult to force anyone to do anything they cannot afford. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*
January 24th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Brown, Conservatism, Democrat, Healthcare reform, Massachusetts, Republican, Senator, What It Means
2 Comments »
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*
January 23rd, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, Quackery Exposed
Tags: Bad Advice, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Complementary And Alternative Medicine, Dr. Oz, Mehmet Oz, Oprah, Pseudoscience, Real Age, Reiki
2 Comments »
The newest media Doc on the block is Dr. Mehmet Oz. When he was first seen on Oprah, he seemed engaging and answered some interesting questions in a real and professional way. The audience loved his blue scrubs and boyish clean cut open style.
That was then.
Let’s face it…the media spotlight seems to corrupt even the best physicians. Dr. Oz now has his own show and website and production company. That is a pretty big infrastructure to maintain and we know that the public is fickle. So what does he do?
His “Real-Age” website got 27 million people to sign up and take a health quiz. That information was sold to pharmaceutical companies who used the direct emails for marketing. Real-Age also sends the participants a series of emails about conditions they may (or may not) have and drugs they can use to treat it, based on their answers to the on-line health quiz, sponsored by drug companies of course. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
January 21st, 2010 by Debra Gordon in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Biomedical Ethics, Death, End Of Life Care, Geriatrics, Journalism, Mortality, Nursing, Palliative Care, Taboo
No Comments »
Back in the day when I was a newspaper reporter I completed a biomedical ethics fellowship at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, VA. In addition to sitting in on the hospital’s bioethics committee discussions, I spent much of the week shadowing a nurse in the ICU.
They called her the Death Nurse because her job was to intervene with doctors, nurses, patients and families when the time came for a patient to move from the ICU to hospice. While her title was Supportive Care, she flat out told her me her job was to help people die; not actively, but from behind the scenes by helping patients and those caring for them understand when the time had come to move from curative care to supportive care (email me if you’d like a copy of the article I wrote about her). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Debra Gordon on Medical Writing (and other medical topics of interest)*
