By ignoring recommendations on mammography, Sebelius demonstrated why the government has been unable to reign in health care costs: Even when testing is found to be harmful, our leaders still demand more tests.
What is the current health care really about? Is it about cost? Is it government's inability to adequately deliver services that are best left to the private sector? Or is it a middle-class disdain for the poor?
We have witnessed public controversy over claims that end-of-life counseling provisions amount to "death panels." That doesn't mean that there is no role for ethics panels to determine that some patients are beyond medical hope.
This weekend, thousands of Arkansans convened at the Statehouse Convention Center for a mass free health clinic, the first of its kind in Little Rock.
Atul Gawande is a doctor who writes for the New Yorker. Or perhaps, at this point in his career, he's a journalist who also happens to be a doctor.
What am I supposed to celebrate, exactly? That a health care bill will be debated? Even though, to get past a 60-vote cloture motion, it will have to be gutted even beyond the shadow of a bill it is now (the current bill has a weak public option, no other mechanism to really cut costs, and hands billions of dollars to the insurance companies who are a big part of the original problem)? I'm not saying I don't support this weak bill (it's better than nothing), but if it gets any weaker and cuts into the Constitutional right of women to choose, really, does the good still outweigh the bad?
You may feel daunted by the number of pages in these health reform bills, not to mention the legislative language that is often impossible to decipher. But here are some important provisions you should know about.
As a psychotherapist I've done my share of counseling squabbling couples and have learned to looking for common ground. Lately I've begun to apply this method to politics, with some fascinating results.
it is ludicrous to imply that private insurance companies don't ration care by flat-out refusing procedures that people genuinely need or desperately want.
Harry Reid thinks he's got enough votes, but then this is the reason why the vote keeps getting pushed back -- because he's obviously still scrambling for the final few votes before he moves ahead.
Claims that mental health workers are at risk for PTSD from treating their patients add an unnecessary layer of confusion to the question of how we can best serve our veterans.
America, how does it feel to wake up and learn that you can't have healthcare tests that you think you or your loved one needs?
My 84-year-old mother was full of venomous indignation at dinner last night over the great mammogram take-back. Bureaucrats, in her view, will happily...
As the health care reform bill makes its way through the U.S. Senate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said today that he was "actively exploring" new ways to be as big a dick as humanly possible.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened last night, and already swarms of movie goers have packed theaters to see the continuing saga of vampires, werewolv...
This is arguably the most subjective part of the health care system. Do some countries value their physicians more than others? What about the emphasis on primary care versus specialties?
The institutions that are blocking progress have rallied over the past few months to defend two causes with very little popular support in the United States: rape and slavery. No, really.
If we live in poverty and industry uses our neighborhoods to site their most toxic operations, how do we pay for the illness those operations cause?
Health Care Reform: Will Real Statesmen and Stateswomen Please Stand Up? What would Senators Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Lan...
Harry Reid's public option is a token public option -- a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except that it still contains the word "public."
