Atul Gawande on Cost and the Soul of American Medicine

Atul Gawande's superb article - " The Cost Conundrum " - in the June 1 issue of the New Yorker magazine is long (7500 words) b...

Abortion and Conscience

Here's the assignment I developed for today's section of Harvard Medical School's required first year course on "Medical Et...

Public and Expert Beliefs about Health Care Reform

Readers who have not made use of the superb information provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation are missing a national treasure. Director D...

Desperately Seeking Health Insurance

I spent the weekend in rural New Hampshire, and had occasion to talk with a friend about his elusive quest for affordable health insurance. ...

Obama at Notre Dame

Dear readers - if, like me, you did not see President Obama's graduation speech at Notre Dame University yesterday, watch it now. I'...

ALS, the Rule of Rescue, and the FDA

The opening paragraph in " Fighting for a Last Chance at Life " in today's New York Times led me to expect what the Brits call...

Octomom, Ethics, and Health Care Limits

This morning I participated in the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans (MAHP) ethics forum. MAHP has been sponsoring 3-4 ethics forum...

The Demise of Fee-for-Service in Massachusetts

A wonky-sounding component of the Massachusetts government - the Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System - is fomenting a quie...

Learning about Health Care Limits from the Recession

I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking about how we in the U.S. can come to understand and accept limits on the health care we...

Good Politics and Good Ethics about Abortion

An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal described how President Obama has convened a group of abortion rights opponents and suppo...

Ethical Challenges in Veterans Administration Healthcare Facilities

The April issue of the American Journal of Bioethics has a valuable piece of ethics research from the VHA. To understand the challenges fac...

President Obama's Grandmother and the Ethics of Health Care Reform

I've written a number of posts about the need for presidential leadership for our country to come to grips with the issue of health care...