One of the fashionably bipartisan Washington topics for chest beating is the opioid cris-, sorry, “THE OPIOID CRISIS!!!” I’m one of the apparently few physicians who thinks that there should be no federal role in the provision of daily health care, based on several decades of observation: everything in health care that Uncle Sam touches gets worse.…
Do you order too many tests? A lot of doctors are told we do, for various reasons, and every one of us knows the expected talking points when asked: too many tests lead to incidental findings that then require more testing, often invasive, which leads to bad and arguably avoidable consequences. We all know that over-testing leads to…
The Aloha State is having some growing pains with its Payment Transformation system, a capitated model run by “Hawaii Medical Service Association, the state’s largest health care insurer.” It works like this: HMSA pays a family doc about $24 per patient, per month. All the doc has to do is keep costs in line, and figure out…
Here is another story about a doctor convicted of overprescribing, which led to the death of a patient, and this 71 year-old is going up the river for a likely 20-year term. U.S. Attorney Ben Glassman brags, “We’re going to investigate those doctors. They’re going to be tried, and … they’re going to be finding themselves in…
Anyone with half a brain knows very well that sodas contain a lot of sugar. And consuming a lot of sugar can cause all sorts of tooth rot and will make you fat, the latter leading to bad joints, diabetes, heart disease, and only a very tiny, miniscule shot as ending up in the latest…
In all honesty, I haven’t kept up with the recent Pharmacy Benefit Manager furor, beyond assuming that they are totally corrupt as is anyone dealing with them. PBM’s like Express Scripts have earned notoriety by having preferred pharmaceutical makers sell them more expensive preferred drugs, which are then put on formularies. The drug makers then…
Over the weekend, our buddies at the American Academy of Family Practice got the jump on April 1 with a great tongue-in-cheek mass email for National Doctor’s Day. My thoughts in parenthesis. Around here, we celebrate doctors Since answering your calling to be a family doctor, you have guided, taught, held hands, brought joy, comforted,…
San Francisco continues to originate things I had never bothered to imagine: “Medical residents, interns walk off the job at UCSF Medical Center over failed contract talks.” “Resident physicians, interns and clinical fellows walked off their shifts for 15 minutes Tuesday at noon to draw attention to failed contract negotiations between their union and the…