Category Archives: News

Maryland Experiments With Capping Hospital Spending

Posted on January 14, 2014 by

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid recently offered a waiver to Maryland in order to try to pursue their hospital payment model as a possible scenario for the rest of the nation.  It is based upon their current model which … Continue reading →

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Further Follow-Up On The New Anticoagulants

Posted on September 14, 2013 by

From the HeartWire there was further follow-up of prior data looking at Pradaxa (dabigatran) versus Coumadin (warfarin) in mechanical heart valve patients. It would appear for now at least that the traditional treatment of warfarin is still in the driver’s … Continue reading →

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Moral Hazard Anyone?

Posted on June 20, 2013 by

This article is a response to a story in this Weekend’s Wall Street Journal (June 15-16, 2013) which explains that Detroit is quickly heading to bankruptcy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324688404578545373282545626.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection The information in the article highlights how making promises to employees in unions can create … Continue reading →

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Can Hospital-Owned Practices Survive in The Long Run?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by

The following is a very well written and very relevant article by Arthur Gale, MD.  After the article, I have included my own brief commentary on the issue.  Please read on.

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How The Supreme Court Doomed PPACA To Failure

Posted on March 26, 2013 by

In this excerpt from Regulation: The Cato Review of Business and GovernmentThomas Lambert of the Cato Institute perfectly sums up why we have such expensive healthcare in the United States.  When third party payers (Medicare and Insurance companies) pay for … Continue reading →

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Internal Medicine News

Posted on March 24, 2013 by

This post is part of a segment called ‘What is Doctor Reading?’ where I aggregate interesting articles about medicine and provide a brief commentary.  The following are news pieces from the February 15th issue of Internal Medicine News. Print Edition Headline: … Continue reading →

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Up to 98,000 patients die each year in the hospital as a result of preventable medical errors

Posted on January 30, 2013 by

A recent report published in JAMA revealed some harrowing facts about the failure of our strained hospital system.  Payment controls and other regulations are causing physician workloads to exceed safe levels which results in the death of patients. The hospitalist … Continue reading →

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Future Predictions for Healthcare in America

Posted on November 26, 2012 by

According to the recent Presidential vote, we as a nation do in fact wish to nationalize healthcare.  We do believe that a larger federal government is the answer to our woes and finally, it is ok to ask for more … Continue reading →

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We Need To Rethink Hormone Replacement In Women

Posted on October 19, 2012 by

A recent Danish study shows that 10 years of hormone replacement started early in menopause significantly improved cardiovascular risk (50% reduction).  A few years ago America was floored by the Women’s Health Initiative’s results which suggested no cardiovascular benefit and … Continue reading →

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“Get ready for a two-tier system of medical care”

Posted on September 25, 2012 by

As I explained in the Mediscare/Paul Ryan blog a couple of weeks ago, Medicare’s price-fixing has resulted in the Health Insurance industry indexing their prices to Medicare. Additionally,  unrealistic demands by both are causing primary care doctors to just flat refuse to contract.  The … Continue reading →

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