The Ethics of the Appeals Process

From time to time ( here and here ) I write about tools that organizations can use to strengthen the ethics of their enterprise. For medica...

Accountability for Reasonableness in Tanzania

Starting in the early 1990s, Norman Daniels and I conducted a series of studies on how U.S. health organizations made decisions about priori...

Physicians should not be Drug Company "Educators"

Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat’s article in today’s New York Times Magazine provides valuable insight into the ethics of drug marketing. Carlat...

A Tipping Point for Pharma Ethics?

Pharma is the Jekyll and Hyde of health care. At their best, drug companies develop research-based treatment breakthroughs and do well by do...

The Intimidation of Dr. John Buse

The Senate Finance Committee has jurisdiction over Medicare, Medicaid and the FDA. This makes it an important player in health policy and ov...

Barriers to Serving Vulnerable Populations

Anyone interested in the politics and ethics of health care resource allocation should read Christine Ferguson’s recent Health Affairs artic...

Eureka – A High Quality Public Debate on a Hot Medical Ethics Issue!

A page 1 article on the selling of kidneys in today’s Wall Street Journal is sure to trigger extensive public discussion. We will soon see ...

Organizational Ethics and Patient-Centered Care

I recently reviewed a Commonwealth Fund report on “ Patient-Centered Care: What Does it Take? ” Although the word “ethics” appears only once...

Why Incentives Will Not Control Health Care Costs

On November 1 and November 8 the New England Journal of Medicine published two important articles on rising health care costs by Peter Orsza...

What Counts More for Organizational Ethics – Infrastructure or Leadership?

This is a trick question. The answer is – both. In my view, infrastructure and leadership pretty much tie. Albert Schweitzer’s teaching – “e...

The Ethics of Medical Tourism

In July, the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Ethics Advisory Group (which I chair) discussed the ethics of health plan involvement with medical ...

Gary Wills on Abortion

Gary Wills, one of my favorite writers, has thrown a constructive bomb into the abortion debate. In a Los Angeles Times column “ Abortion i...

The Ethics of "Skin in the Game" Thinking

An article on “ How Much ‘Skin in the Game’ do Medicare Beneficiaries Have?” in the November-December issue of Health Affairs presents impor...

Globalization, Mental Health Ethics, and Woody Allen

Three words in an article about outsourcing in yesterday’s New York Times got me thinking about globalization, mental health ethics, and Wo...