The Ethics of the Hospital Safety Net (3)

This is the third in a series of occasional postings about the U.S. safety net system. (See previous posts here and here .) Yesterday I met...

Let's Stop "Fighting" Cancer

Judy Foreman's column in today's Boston Globe addresses one of my pet peeves - the ubiquitous metaphor of "fighting" canc...

Health Care Reform and Ethics in Oregon

Keep watching the Oregon health care reform process. I expect that Oregon will be teaching new lessons about health system policy and ethics...

Apology, Ethics, and the Law

An article about apology in yesterday's New York Times - "Doctors Start to Say 'I'm Sorry' Long Before 'See You in...

Ethics of the Big Lie in DTC Advertising

Last week I argued that while - in my view - the societal consequences of direct to consumer drug advertising (DTC) are, on balance, more b...

Giving Ethics Education a Bad Name

Three months ago I described " A Ridiculous Use of Medical Ethics Teaching " - a case where a recurrent offender was "sentenc...

Controlling Health Care Costs in Massachusetts

An interesting an important drama about health care costs is coming soon to Massachusetts. A bill proposed by Senate President Therese Murra...

Drug Advertising - What the Public Thinks

If you want a balanced analysis of the pros and cons of how the U.S. public thinks about direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, yesterda...

Medical Ethics, Etiquette, and Checklists

Here's what Dr. Michael Kahn learned from his recent hospitalization - "patients may care less about about whether their doctors ar...

Massachusetts Health Care Reform - Access and Cost

Measured by access, Massachusetts Health Care Reform is doing very well. But unless the state can get a grip on costs the reform effort will...

Why We're So Ineffective in Controlling Health Care Costs

Two recent publications show with painful clarity why we are so unable to moderate the cost increase trend. The New England Healthcare Insti...

McCain Seeks to Eliminate Employer Health Plans

Presidential Candidate John McCain presented his healthcare reform ideas on April 30th, to a Tampa, Florida audience. True to his style, Sen...

Learning how to Ration

Over the years I have posed this question to physicians I respect in a wide range of medical specialties – “if you were the czar of your fie...