Written Info

By Matthew Holt Jonathan Cohn has started blogging almost daily on the politics of health care at The Treatment. And it’s a treat to read. Jon is a member of the recently exposed vast left wing conspiracy (so am I,…

By TOBIAS GILK Whiplash. I don’t know what else to call it when the US Supreme Court does a near 180° reversal on a decision from just a year ago on medical product liability. Consider the following… On February 20th,…

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE As part of a sweeping effort to address the woes of the current US economy, the government has placed $19 billion on the table for HIT, aimed at containing healthcare costs and creating new jobs. The ultimate…

By Matthew Holt Maher’s being funny (at least he thinks he is!), but he’s tapping into a meme that I think that many in DC including any Democrats are missing. I was watching CNN on Sunday and Sanjay Gupta brought…

Prostate cancer screening is about to get a whole lot cloudier.

Published this morning in the NEJM, the results of the study by the National Cancer Institute showed that, for men who were screened with both a PSA and digital rectal exam, there was no difference when compared to men who received “usual care.”

The results confirm [...]

Tragic news this morning regarding actress Natasha Richardson, who reportedly, suffered a head injury during a ski lesson in Canada.

According to reports, she fell on a beginner’s ski hill, and did not hit anyone or anything during the fall. There was no obvious sign of injury, and in fact, she was “was walking around [...]

Do words matter, or is it just semantics?

A recent article in the USA Today highlights a study showing that nurses, student nurses and people with no health care backgrounds all “reported a greater likeliness to forgo resuscitation if ‘allow natural death’ was used.”

Palliative care physician Christian Sinclair sheds more light on the topic, noting the [...]

Health care reform is the headline-maker these days, and I give my take in a couple of recent articles.

First, Congressional Quarterly wonders if there are enough primary care doctors for every patient newly insured under a universal coverage plan (a familiar take, I must say). Anyways, here’s my contribution to the piece:
The biggest problem [...]

In a surprise, President Obama has signaled a willingness to discuss medical liability as part of the health reform process.

Good for him for standing up to the trial lawyers, a core constituency of the left.

That’s a good sign, as the costs of defensive medicine brought on by the broken malpractice system, should be addressed if [...]

Recent data has suggested that we may be finding too many cases of prostate cancer.

This is important, since there are no studies suggesting that screening for early prostate cancer saves lives. In many cases, “most prostate tumors grow so slowly that had they not been screened, those men would have died of something else [...]