Ignored by most politicians, David Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), is taking his message on tour. His presentation on the unsustainability of the U.S. economy can be viewed on YouTube. The biggest […]
Volume 64, No. 1 January 2008 STUPID IDEAS ON “HEALTH CARE REFORM” The American College of Physicians (ACP), the second-largest physician group in the U.S., has repackaged its perennial call for socialized medicine as “evidence […]
The New York State health department has plans: to control the cost of hospital care, and to rescue the state’s malpractice insurance carriers. In 2006, the “Berger Commission” (the Commission on Health Care Facilities in […]
The penalties for not buying insurance in Massachusetts have been set too low to “encourage” compliance, stated Jonathan Gruber, a director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector. The proposed 2008 top penalty of $912 per […]
In 2007, more than 79 million records were compromised in the United States, a fourfold increase from 2006. Many contained Social Security and/or credit card numbers. While government and private entities are spending more and […]
By a measure signed into law by Acting Governor Richard Codey, pregnant women will be routinely tested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It also requires testing of newborns whose mothers with positive or unknown HIV […]
Many highly regarded hospitals in the U.S. routinely diagnose brain death without following the guidelines promulgated in 1995 by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), according to a survey presented at the American Neurological Association […]
Although compressions-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was unveiled in 2003, after a decade of research, the American Heart Association still stops short of recommending it. Two new studies, of 10,000 Swedish and 5,000 Japanese patients, who […]
There’s a new kind of brokerage firm in our brave new world: agencies that assemble databases of young women and market their eggs to customers who want a baby and can’t produce one themselves. Some […]
William McGuire, M.D. former chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, agreed to one of the largest executive-pay givebacks in history, forfeiting $620 million in stock option gains and retirement pay, to settle civil and federal claims against stock-option backdating. The final outcome, however, remains uncertain as of Dec 28.
