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An under-the-radar debate is occurring in health care between those who say data shows that practice variations across the land are “unwarranted” and those who maintain that such variation is inevitable given socioeconomic population differences and cost of practice differences…

By MERRILL GOOZNER Last week’s White House meeting on health care reform re-floated the idea of taxing employer-provided health benefits to help pay for insuring the uninsured. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the powerhouse Senate Finance Committee, told reporters…

By Matthew Holt Now before I explain why I say the Democrats are girlie-men, let me say three quick things. 1. I am not a supporter of Medicare-for-all, or Canadian style, single-payer (or anything primarily based on fee-for-service payment) although…

By RICHARD SCOVILLE Richard Scoville, PhD, is an independent consultant specializing in healthcare quality improvement and performance measurement. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…

President Obama hopes so.
But, as Abraham Verghese writes, we can’t be so sure of that. The great cost-cutting hopes proposed by the government, which also include information technology and preventive medicine, all have very little data that show there will be any meaningful cost savings.
Are we focusing on the wrong things for cost control? [...]

I was in sixth grade when my holiday gift haul included an electric razor.

It’s looking more and more likely that federal health reform will look very similar to what’s going on in Massachusetts.
As I’ve written in the past, expanding coverage is easy, controlling costs is not. And Massachusetts has taken the route of least political resistance and did the former.
I’ve written previously that expanding coverage without re-aligning [...]

Here are some of the more interesting comments readers have left recently.
1. David Block on the ACP’s guest column, A practice model for increasing the appeal of General Internal Medicine:
Weinberger talks about the efficiency of Care. Our commentators talk about the efficiency of Consumption. Weinberger assumes the one-on-one of two individuals, known to each other, [...]

Homeopathy in epidemic prevention – Cuba leads the way Cuba goes through a yearly cycle of Leptospirosis epidemic, especially after hurricanes flood the countryside and water pollution reaches its height. (Leptospirosis: infectious disease caused by the spirochaete Leptospira transmitted to humans from rats, giving jaundice and kidney damage. Can cause death) Each year the graphs [...]

A pharmacist in Ohio is being criminally prosecuted in a medical mistake that resulted in a death of a two-year old child.
Is that going too far?
Indeed, if the criminal prosecution of this pharmacist is successful, it may lead to a dangerous precedent. Indeed, “he wasn’t drunk or impaired. He wasn’t even the one who [...]