Medicare Open to All (3)

President Obama's lobbying efforts with governors may be smart politics, but they show the sad state of ethical discourse with regard to...

David Rothman on Medical Professionalism

This summer I'm doing some writing on the ethics of medical professionalism. I reread an article by David Rothman, published in the New...

The Ethical Culture of Medicine

I'm in the Green Mountains of Vermont now, where my wife teaches for 7 weeks at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English . ...

Drs. Elton and Sanchez Get it Right

I've taken the liberty of copying two letters from today's New York Times. The AMA's ongoing resistance to progressive reforms h...

The Ethics of an Individual Mandate

It's looking more and more as if the health reform legislation that the President wants to see emerging from Congress this summer will i...

Patient Access to the Doctor's Notes

With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston is starting an "open notes" stu...

David Leonhardt on Rationing

In the business section of today's New York Times, economics columnist David Leonhardt has the best short discussion of rationing I...

Turning the Republican Attack on Health Care Reform on its Head

We're entering the sound bite period of health care reform. Frank Luntz, the guru of Republican phraseology and the ventriloquist behind...

Seeing the Hippocratic Oath in a New Light

I've always had trouble with the second paragraph of the Hippocratic Oath : To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parent...

The Upside of Health Care Competition

Last fall I wrote about how the Hannaford supermarket chain was offering incentives to employees to have procedures like hip and knee replac...

A Palestinian Physician Teaches about Professionalism

Driving to my office this morning I was brought to tears by an NPR story about Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. Dr. Abuelaish is an OB-GYN physician...

The Medicare Food Fight is Underway

In yesterday's post I argued that we should create - and hold to - a budget for our heath system. Today's news shows how difficult...

More Money for Health Care = More Unhappy Doctors

The national debate about health care is heating up rapidly. We're already hearing a lot about whether we'll have the political will...

MBA Code of Ethics

Before yesterday's graduation, half of the Harvard MBA class signed an oath , promising "to create value responsibly and ethically....

The Murder of Dr. George Tiller (2)

By good luck I was in my car shortly after noon yesterday and heard the NPR program Here and Now . Host Robin Young interviewed Miriam Kleim...

The Murder of Dr. George Tiller

In order to assert the sanctity of life, an abortion opponent murdered Dr. George Tiller, one of only three physician providers of late term...