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Health Care System

The Right to Life (Last Chapter)

Francis Levy | Posted 04.22.2013 | Healthy Living
Francis Levy

People are just living life to death. They are living it up, as it were. The health care system is tanking from keeping a relatively small percentage ...

Help People Follow the Doctor's Orders: Insurers Must Expand Coverage of Prevention

Jeffrey Levi | Posted 04.17.2013 | Healthy Living
Jeffrey Levi

For too long, our system has been set up to focus on "sick care," instead of helping us all stay healthier in the first place. This needs to change and, thankfully, it has begun to.

Conflicts Between Public Health and Medical Care

Bruce A. Barron | Posted 04.16.2013 | Healthy Living
Bruce A. Barron

Efforts to improve the health of the general population are typically addressed to diseases and behaviors that increase the risk of identifiable preventable disease and disability. In sharp contrast, medical care is a service delivered to a patient.

Congress Sequesters, Citizens Sweat It

Cathie Beck | Posted 03.22.2013 | Politics
Cathie Beck

Last August I abandoned my health insurance company when they escalated my premiums from $400 a month to nearly $1,200 a month in just a few years because they could. I have rheumatoid arthritis, an allegedly incurable malady that can cause severe inflammation and pain, and possible early death.

Why Hospital Choice Matters

Joseph Doyle | Posted 03.22.2013 | Healthy Living
Joseph Doyle

As our health care system moves from compensating providers on the basis of quantity of care to quality of care, it's very important to measure hospital performance. But a key limitation for that measurement is patient selection.

Will Mobile 'Virtual Assistants' Propel the Future of Medicine?

Jonathon Dreyer | Posted 05.19.2013 | Healthy Living
Jonathon Dreyer

The future of a quality, efficient health care system rests in our ability to press industry players to embrace collaboration and push for the creation of a connected ecosystem where, from patient to payer, mHealth technology acts as the ember to spark ongoing innovation.

CNN's Visionary Documentary on Health Care

David Freudberg | Posted 03.10.2013 | TV
David Freudberg

To get a sense of how out of whack American health care costs are, we need only look to Canada, a society whose standard of living and culture are very similar to that of the United States.

Advancing the Public Health System by Defining the Foundational Capabilities of Public Health

Jeffrey Levi | Posted 04.27.2013 | Healthy Living
Jeffrey Levi

With adequate, stable funding that ensures basic foundational capabilities, the nation's chief health strategists can take advantage of several evolving opportunities to turn the nation's sick care system into a true health care system.

Huffington This Week: 'Good People Live Here'

Arianna Huffington | Posted 04.03.2013 | Politics
Arianna Huffington

In this week's issue, Peter Goodman and Jeffrey Young look at the 49 million Americans who lack health insurance, "a crowded group that no one chooses to join." And Radley Balko writes about a Mississippi cold case -- part real-life murder mystery, part exposé of the state's justice system.

Technology Can Help Us Live Longer

Florence P. Haseltine, Ph.D., M.D. | Posted 03.31.2013 | Healthy Living
Florence P. Haseltine, Ph.D., M.D.

As evidence mounts that innovations such as smart devices can improve the health and care of an individual, more resources must be focused on their development and integration into the health care system.

Toward Opening a Practical Dialogue on Improving US Health Care

Josef Woodman | Posted 02.13.2013 | Politics
Josef Woodman

While much of the health care "GDP gap" between the U.S. and other nations can be attributed to cost of living, it's undeniable there's plenty of room for reimagining our approach to health care, not simply in terms of reform, but in market-driven innovation.

Personhood: Causality of Modern Medicine

John Geyman | Posted 02.05.2013 | Healthy Living
John Geyman

The present state of health care in this country to an increasing extent involves strangers caring for strangers, with patients' narratives and life stories no longer a key element guiding decisions about their own health care.

The Good Doctor

Jesse Dylan | Posted 01.09.2013 | TED Weekends
Jesse Dylan

We must acknowledge that our health care system is composed of people -- it doesn't just take care of people. Those people -- our cardiologists, nurse practitioners, X-ray technicians, and surgeons -- work better when they work together.

Changing the Culture of Medicine

Leo Galland, M.D. | Posted 01.02.2013 | TED Weekends
Leo Galland, M.D.

Brian Goldman makes an impassioned personal case for changing the culture of medicine by admitting errors of judgment. I think that the most important step in making that change is recognizing the relationship between physician and patient for what it really is: a partnership.

Obamacare Starts Cracking the Whip: Are the Wrong People Paying the Price?

Tom Silva | Posted 01.01.2013 | Healthy Living
Tom Silva

Now that Obamacare is real and functioning, we appear to be seeing a real-life example of the correlation-without-causation problem. How do the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services establish that the reason a patient was admitted was because of a hospital's negligence?

Jeffrey Young

Health Care System Bends But Doesn't Break

HuffingtonPost.com | Jeffrey Young | Posted 10.31.2012 | Business

The health care system seems to have withstood the worst of Hurricane Sandy despite some high-profile breakdowns, including the evacuation of several ...

Dee Dee Ricks -- An Education Continued: Making Patient Navigation a Household Word

Amy Palmer | Posted 12.11.2012 | Healthy Living
Amy Palmer

You might have seen Dee Dee Ricks' documentary last year on HBO. Titled The Education of Dee Dee Ricks, it followed, with unwavering honesty, Dee Dee...

Does America Really Want Change?

Lawrence Rosen, M.D. | Posted 12.08.2012 | Healthy Living
Lawrence Rosen, M.D.

The real problem is that the big dollar incentives don't line up. The folks with the most skin in the game (insurance and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and large medical associations) profit dearly from the status quo. More care equals more money.

How We Can Truly Improve Health Care

Matthew Heineman | Posted 12.05.2012 | Healthy Living
Matthew Heineman

In directing ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight To Rescue American Healthcare, Susan Froemke and I explore how our system is broken and why it doesn't want to change. But we also highlight pioneering leaders and courageous patients across the country who are implementing solutions.

Emergency Rooms Are on Life Support

Debra Houry, MD, MPH | Posted 11.26.2012 | Politics
Debra Houry, MD, MPH

Even if the roadblocks to greater funding were to disappear, Governor Romney's "let them eat emergency rooms" stance doesn't begin to get at a way to fix our broken health care system. Ask any emergency room doctor.

Consumer Access to Health Care Information and the ONC: An Acronym at Work

Alan Blaustein | Posted 11.11.2012 | Healthy Living
Alan Blaustein

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology of the Department of Health and Human Services recently held its 2012 Consumer Health IT Summit on the continuing effort to advance consumer access to health information.

Our Health Care System Wastes $750 BILLION Per Year

AP | RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR | Posted 11.06.2012 | Business

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, ...

Less Equals More: Cures to Health Care Overspending

Dr. Veronica Anderson | Posted 10.09.2012 | Healthy Living
Dr. Veronica Anderson

There is only one way to begin chipping away at the exorbitant cost of health care in America. That is by each and every individual adopting a new and different mindset to control spending. This includes those of us who write daily about health issues.

The Health of Our Nation Hangs in the Balance

Matthew Heineman | Posted 08.21.2012 | Politics
Matthew Heineman

There are innovative solutions already at work in communities across the country. There are very smart clinicians, hospital administrators, policy-makers, business executives, and community leaders who are fighting to rescue the system.

Just What the Patient Ordered

Howard A. Zucker, MD | Posted 05.30.2012 | Impact
Howard A. Zucker, MD

Was Marcus Welby better able to treat the entire patient than Dr. House? It is time for America to create an oral history of the medical profession. These gray-haired physicians may illuminate how we might meld the best of the past and the promise of the future of medicine.