March 2010
84 posts
Judge Rejects Patents on Cancer Genes →
A Manhattan judge ruled Monday that two genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer are “the law of nature,” thereby nullifying seven patents by Myriad Genetics of Utah. Prior to the decision, women wishing to be tested for the indicators would have had to consult with the patent holder—at a cost of $3,000—but now the monopoly no longer applies.
Myriad argued that while...
The Social Media Bubble. →
I’d like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships…Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency...
Is anyone aware of high quality research that...
For example, does Mint change your spending behavior?
“Most people don’t realize that if you continue living the way you’re...”
– Me.
“With healthcare top of mind right now it seemed timely to include an interview...”
– Herman Miller blog: Lifework
A clarification regarding mandatory calorie...
I am 100% in favor of being as transparent as possible and providing people the data they may need to make healthy decisions. My point was simply that the legislative branch of the government should not legislate the practice of medicine, whether it’s public health or medical interventions. Although it makes sense that providing people with calorie information at the point of purchase, what if it...
Evidence does not support mandatory calorie counts... →
matthewdipaolamd:
The evidence so far (counter intuitively) does not support listing calorie counts next to menu choices at restaurants. See here.
Makes you wonder. Is this the new era of evidenced based practice that we’ve all been waiting for?
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that from here on out any health-related government mandate that originates in Congress won’t be...
How would you fix the access problem?
Squashed asked me:
I appreciate your thoughts on healthcare. And I agree that the bill that just passed congress (probably) won’t do enough to slow cost increases. I also appreciate that you’re at the forefront of working out innovative solutions that, hopefully, will lead to less expensive or better quality coverage for many people. And I also understand the worry that some of the...
“In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing...”
– Frank Rich ”The Rage is Not About Healthcare”
The speed of government vs. the speed of today's...
The consensus amongst economists and the government in the 2009 financial crisis was that “they didn’t see it coming” and “once they realized what was happening it was too late.”
Is the same thing happening with the health insurance crisis? Are the health economists going to claim they were blindsided? Or are the Democrats going to blame it on the Bush-era...
Cost containment in health care.
hjluks:
I begin with the obvious question. “The health-care legislation? It’s a bad bill,” Mr. Becker replies. “Health care in the United States is pretty good, but it does have a number of weaknesses. This bill doesn’t address them. It adds taxation and regulation. It’s going to increase health costs—not contain them.”
Drafting a good bill would have been easy, he continues. Health savings...
What does "cutting healthcare costs" really mean?
Health insurance premiums double every 8 years because healthcare costs double every eight years. We also spend almost double on healthcare per person compared to other countries. So what does this mean now that we’ve mandated sickcare insurance? The bill contains wording around czars and experimental pilot projects looking to “cut healthcare costs.”
A conservative estimate is...
From a Doctor Who Will Not Comply →
March 23, 2010 My Dear Patient, As you must know, Congress has just passed extensive legislation governing health care delivery and insurance systems. Whether you agree with what it does or not, we are all now subject to this law and its sweeping changes. I have always conducted my medical practice with my patient’s best interests as my first priority. Although not legally obliged to do...
What should health insurance reform look like?
Realistic or not…
Obama should have said to the three main sellers of sickness (Deliverers (hospitals/doctors), insurance companies, Big Pharma/Medical Device Makers):
“The business model you’ve created to sap our country dry for the past 50 years is unsustainable. So your business model has 5 years left. Over the next five years, the US government is offering the largest...
I'm done talking about health insurance reform.
And with that last post, I’m done complaining about how health insurance reform will be a colossal mess in the next decade and back with your regularly scheduled programming of optimism and designing a better, happier, and healthier world.
Why health insurance reform bothers me.
For many decades, the process and definition of healthcare delivery (what it means to receive healthcare) has been intimately tied to how we pay for healthcare. The government (Medicare) defines what they pay for (this kind of office visit, procedure, device, or medication for this certain diagnosis). And the private insurance industry follows suit.
Things happen in healthcare in response to the...
“The problem on Wall Street is cultural and nothing will ever fix it. We’re...”
– John Carney (via soupsoup)
Geez…that sounds like me.
Revolutionizing Medicine - One chip at a time. →
This is one of the big dark secrets of modern medicine…the rate of developing diagnostics is far outpacing the rate of doing anything about that diagnosis. Doctors are armed with two things— pills and procedures. And for the past decade, there have been only 6 to 10 new medications approved by the FDA every year. There have been advances using robots for surgery, but in reality, most...
“As Congress and the people consider restructuring the American healthcare...”
– Eric Chevlen, M.D. - Confessions of a Health Care Rationer
This is a phenomenal discussion of how health care is inevitably rationed, by a doctor and insurance industry insider.
(via sds)
Health insurance reform isn't about most of us.
Ten percent of people spend 80% of healthcare dollars. Therefore 90% of people spend only 20%. The vast majority of us are light healthcare users. We may need a couple of office visits a year and maybe we cut our finger and need some stitches. Ninety percent of us don’t require much.
Controlling health costs only applies to that 10% of the population who are heavy users. The rest of us are...
“Obama’s legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower...”
– Robert Reich (via azspot) (via marco)
Have the previous 50 years been a success for healthcare in America? Have these historical solutions put us on the right trajectory toward a sustainable health solution? Has anyone discussed the possibility that we screwed up 50 years ago? Have we been so...
Menu Labeling to Go National, Thanks to Health... →
“Included in the more than 2,000 pages of the legislation is Section 2572, which mandates that chain restaurants with 20 or more locations will have to display nutritional and calorie information.”
A very positive component of health insurance reform…
Pro-single-payer doctors: Health bill leaves 23...
robot-heart-politics:
ziatroyano:
As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House’s passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.
Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and...
What Does Health Care Reform Mean for Startups and... →
What's my point with all of these recent posts?
I simply want to point out that healthcare is complex, both the payment and the delivery side of things. It’s a highly personal and emotional issue. This isn’t like taxes or building roads— it’s about how to create the absolute best platform that ensures equitable, efficient, affordable, effective healthcare that maximizes our country’s potential for both old and...
A few questions I have re: health reform.
What aspect of access to healthcare is a right? What kind of healthcare? Acute, life-threatening? Chronic, annoying? Chronic, life-threatening? Cosmetic, vanity? Cosmetic, reconstructive? Evidence-based vs. non-evidence based? Who decides what’s a right? Who/what companies influence the czar who decides?
Do we want Congress to decide the science behind medical interventions? Where is the...
Let's get the terminology right...
Please stop calling this healthcare reform. It’s health insurance reform. There’s a huge difference. Healthcare reform would have tried to solve two things at once:
How we pay for care.
How we deliver care.
Health insurance reform simply changes who writes the check for the same poorly distributed, inefficient, backwards, painfully inconvenient, profit-driven care with a business...
“Access to health care was the great unfinished business of our society.”
– Ted Kennedy, in a letter to be read upon his death.
To which Speaker Pelosi added “…that is, until today.”
(via soupsoup)
You can have access or affordability. In America…you can’t have both.
A quick explanation of health reform.
Today the average health insurance premium is $11,000 a year per employee. In 2020 it will be $29,000. Health insurance reform spreads the cost of premiums across three entities— employers, individuals, and the government. Costs are being redistributed to land less on employers and individuals and more on the government.
The cost of healthcare in America is still doubling every 8 years...
The Top Ten Immediate Benefits Americans Will... →
Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans.
Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans
Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole
Offer tax...
“A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a...”
– Months to Live - With Faith and Friends, Convent Offers Model for End of Life.
End of life is such a tough issue. But about 80% of our lifetime medical costs are spent in the last year of our lives. This works out nicely for hospitals and doctors because dying people are cash cows. But dying in a...
Nurse Anesthetists salaries now surpass those of... →
Money of course drives everything in healthcare. The federal government has led the movement to systematically devalue primary care over the past two decades mostly by specialists influencing Medicare reimbursement rates.
As a response, for the past decade, only about 5% of graduating medical residents pursued primary care— mostly because they feel like they should earn more than nurses...
The Future Well: you should follow us.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing about health, happiness, and design over at my new company, The Future Well. You should follow us on Twitter or RSS.
Color Changing Contact Lenses Help Monitor... →
Genius:
Professor Jin Zhang of the University of Western Ontario has developed contact lenses which could help monitor diabetes by changing color with the user’s glucose level variations. The users will be alerted to dangerous sugar levels with a change in lens color, without needing to undergo regular blood tests. The hydrogel lenses are embedded with nanoparticles which change color by reacting...
The problem with electronic records is that... →
Bear with me here…but this is exactly why electronic medical records won’t do much if any to solve healthcare problems. Lay people think that computer systems in medicine look and function like the apps that have changed how we communicate and do business in our everyday lives. That’s very far from the truth inside hospitals and doctor offices. The second you need the system to...
