Health care is pretty complicated, and insurance coverage is even harder to understand.This is the message that comes through clearly from the interviews being done by Dr. Paul Gordon and recorded on his blog, https://bikelisteningtour.wordpress.com. Dr. Gordon is taking a unique sabbatical, riding his bicycle across the country from Washington (DC) to Washington (state), interviewing regular people, mostly in cafés and such, about their take on...
dimanche 26 juin 2016
samedi 18 juin 2016
Serving others or self-serving? All generations have both kinds of people
The current generation of young adults, commonly called “millennials”, is often criticized for being self-centered, “spoiled”, the product of “helicopter parents”, showing the signs of having grown up in a culture where “everyone was a winner”. On the other hand, studies also show them to be the most socially conscious, idealistic, and optimistic generation in a long time (despite the evidence that things are not going so well for them, and little...
dimanche 29 mai 2016
The US health and social service system is evil
I have often written about how our health system is “deeply flawed”, but I realize that there are many ways in which this is a grand understatement. I initially intended to call this piece “health insurance companies are evil”, but realized that this singled out but one player. I mean, insurance companies are at least as evil as other parts of the health and social services sector, but naming only one part both does a disservice to that part, which...
vendredi 13 mai 2016
Good Enough for Government Work: Quality, Cost, and Gaming the System
The entire text of the "Good Enough for Government Work: Quality, Cost, and Gaming the System", the 23rd Odegaard Lecture from the 27th Primary Health Care Acces Conference, is available now as a Google Doc at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17oc3H5qHxA8eoYEwiQ5s5hUulvzo1JaSWldsu41nSDU/editThe link will continue to be available on the right side of this blog pa...
dimanche 1 mai 2016
Good enough for government work: Quality, Cost, and Gaming the System (Part 4 of 4)
This is the fourth and final part of the 23rd Charles Odegaard Lecture, "Good enough for government work:Quality, cost and gaming the system. I will put the entire talk up as an attachment soon.Is this really true? Aren’t some of our costs “our fault”, or at least “their fault”, that is other people? What about those folks who are “gaming the system”, by holding out on buying...
dimanche 24 avril 2016
“Good enough for Government Work”: Quality, cost, and gaming the system, Part 3 (of 4 parts)
This is part three of the Charles Odegaard Lecture, delivered at the 27th National Conference on Primary Health Care Access, April 6, 2016The VA is an example of how quality can be and is compromised when public sector funding is cut. In the area of public health, it can have an even greater impact, and no fewer apologists. When, under cost-cutting mandates from the state...
dimanche 17 avril 2016
“Good enough for Government Work”: Quality, cost, and gaming the system, Part 2 (of 4 parts)
This is part two of the Charles Odegaard Lecture, delivered at the 27th National Conference on Primary Health Care Access, April 6, 2016We have all heard the business mantra “do more with less”, which, on the face of it, is either absurd or, perhaps, a very cynical indictment of how much is currently being “wasted”, waste being differently defined depending upon the point the user wishes to make. I, for example, would consider “waste” to be money...