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Medicare Is Bankrupting Doctors And Hospitals

Elderly People Street Sign by Ethan Prater via FlickrMedicare, the government insurance company for everyone over age 65 (and for the disabled), pays fees to primary care physicians that guarantee bankruptcy. Additionally, 70% of hospitals in the United States lose money on Medicare patients. That’s right … for every patient over age 65, it costs the hospital more to deliver care than the government reimburses. That is why Mayo Clinic has said it will not accept Medicare payments for primary care physician visits at its Arizona facility. Mayo gets it. Nationwide, physicians are paid 20% less from Medicare than from private payers. If you are not paid a sustainable amount, you can’t make it up in volume. It just doesn’t pencil out. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Dr. Val Tells ABC News To Get Off Their Butts

Some researchers say that America has “sitting disease” because (on average) we spend 56 hours a week in a seated position. I had the chance to talk to the ABC news team in Washington, DC, about the importance of daily activity to keep our bodies from losing muscle mass. I encouraged us to think of activity not just as going to the gym, but as the daily commitment to NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, described by Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic). And yes, I confessed to having sitting disease myself… and have made a clear New Year’s resolution to address this problem!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8CWiZYQucA

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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