If you’ve been following health policy for a generation, as I have, these past few weeks have been the Olympics, the U.S. Open, the Super Bowl, and a Clarence Clemons sax solo during a Springsteen encore rolled into one. With the moment of change upon us (he says hopefully), the mix of science and skulduggery, [...]
Archive | June, 2009
Budget Director Orszag Takes Gawande’s Baton and Brings It Home
Thanks to Brad Flansbaum for pointing me to Peter Orszag’s blog on Atul Gawande’s article (the subject of my previous post) on McAllen, Texas’s staggering healthcare costs. I’m not sure what’s more astonishing: the fact that Orszag read the Gawande New Yorker piece, the fact that he followed up on it with data analysis worthy [...]
Gawande Nails It on Healthcare Costs
I just finished reading Atul Gawande’s June 1st New Yorker piece – it’s the Talk of the Health Policy Town – on healthcare’s “Cost Conundrum.” Like most of Atul’s work, the article is lyrical, powerful, insightful, and correct. As you’ve probably heard, Gawande profiles the town of McAllen, Texas, whose healthcare costs are nearly double [...]
Is Hospital Peer Review a Sham? Well, Mostly Yes
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, healthcare’s answer to Ralph Nader, spends most of his days unhappy with somebody. Pragmatic, see-both-sides types like me naturally recoil from Wolfe’s reflexive indictment of institutions ranging from the FDA to Medicare. But Wolfe’s blistering condemnation of medical staff peer review contained in the new report, Hospitals Drop the Ball on Physician [...]
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