April 7, 2021

The COVID-19 Response Is Killing More Than It Saves

In medicine, we are constantly balancing risk and reward.  Nearly all medicines and many therapeutic treatments involve risk to the patient we hope to help.  It's time we use this same intellectual exercise to create a reasona...

August 2, 2020

The tragedy of COVID-19 and the elderly

The most heartbreaking consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is that involving our elderly and infirm.  The mean age of those who have died is 78, but those around this age and older who have not perished from the disease have had to endure a mul...

July 3, 2020

The coronavirus collides with bread and circuses

If you know your history, you have to be aware of the old Roman trope "bread and circuses".  When you had a large population of people who could riot and overthrow your comfortable life as a patrician, you knew that your safety at...

May 22, 2020

What Medicine Is Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic

With every great health care challenge, there is knowledge to be gained.  We are only months into this pandemic, and we have been forced to recognize once again how humbling it is to try to fight nature.  We have managed to dampen...

May 10, 2020

Medicine Will Not Look Back Kindly on COVID-19 Response

Doctors are learning many things from this pandemic.  Unfortunately, a lot of the things that we are learning have little to do with medicine and a lot to do with politics, government bureaucracies, and the media.  While many of u...

May 8, 2020

COVID-19: Government's Bad Choices and the Impact on Doctors

Private physicians' offices across the country have had to furlough core staff, often with decades of service to their businesses, because of the coronavirus-induced, government-mandated shutdown.  Doctors who own these small business v...

October 28, 2019

Health Care Doom on the Horizon

The relationship between Americans and their health care delivery is about to make a dramatic change for the worse.  Consumers of health care are poised to vote for a federally managed system.  Why would they go down this predicta...

January 5, 2019

Fee for Service: A Viable Health Care Alternative

Fee for service, especially when it involves your health care, has acquired a bad name.  "Why should somebody make money off of you being sick?" is the refrain from leftists when espousing their single-payer, government-controlled...

December 5, 2018

Republicans' Best Argument in the Health Care Debate

As we have been reminded from the elections just concluded, the number-one item of concern with U.S. voters is health care.  The reason for people's concern revolves around the never-ending upward spiral of costs.  One huge fa...

August 21, 2017

Disturbing Trends in Obamacare's Collapsing Health Care System

Doctors are recognizing trends in the health care market that don't bode well for patient care or patient costs.   The middle class and upper middle class, those Americans who actually foot the bill for the rest of us by paying inflated...

October 19, 2016

Obamacare, and What (Else) Is Leading Americans to Revolt

What is wrong in health care reflects what is wrong with our relationship with government as a whole in America today.  What is currently in place with Obamacare is a network of government and business elites administering a bloated bureaucracy ...

July 12, 2016

Obamacare and the Private Practitioner: 2016

Private practice medicine in the United States is rapidly going away.  In the past few years, the percentage of doctors who own their own businesses has plummeted.  The middle class, the supposed beneficiaries of Obamacare, can't afford...

November 19, 2014

Patient-Centered Medicine and the Struggle to Survive Obamacare

As we near some sort of attempt at compromise regarding the future of Obamacare, you will hear from health care workers that we need to bring the focus of medicine back on the patients.  The past few years, in which there has been a well-intenti...

August 7, 2014

More Bad News for the Middle Class and Their Health Care

The biggest “unforeseen” issue arising with the poorly named Affordable Care Act is its effect on affordability of care.  The typical middle-class family, in order to afford the broader coverage necessitated by ObamaCare, is having t...

December 11, 2013

The Future of Medical Specialists under the Affordable Care Act

ObamaCare has as its modus operandi a focus on medical management by already  beleaguered primary care physicians and para-health professionals, at the expense of medical and surgical specialists.  The law's administrators hope to...

March 6, 2013

The Future of Private-Practice Medicine in ObamaCare

As we venture into the beginnings of government-run health care, we will be witnessing the not so insidious demise of private practice medicine.  The overall plan of our political class, in their well-intentioned and voter-supported effort to cu...

December 26, 2012

The Truth about Costs in Health Care

Now that the Affordable Health Care Act is set to go into its actual, real-world  administration, we are about to learn the true meaning of cost.  The cost, unfortunately,  will be America losing the best health care in the world....

December 20, 2012

ObamaCare: Game On for Physicians

The health care fix is now set to be law.  The federal government stepping into administration and provision of medical services is creating a lot of uncertainty and concern among those of us that provide health care service.  We know that ...