Volume 74, no. 2 February 2018 Growing physician opposition to their Maintenance of Certification (MOC®) cash cow is apparently causing consternation at the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and its component boards. They need to persuade legislators that MOC® is actually improving the quality of care—and not just contributing to physician burnout, decreasing access, […]
Right to Work laws, in effect in 28 states, provide that no person can be compelled, as a condition of employment, to join or not to join, nor to pay dues to a labor union. The right of states to enact such laws is affirmed in §14(b) of the Taft Hartley Act (https://tinyurl.com/y7vewhfj). However, more […]
Volume 73, no. 12 Having failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”), the Republican regime is moving along to the next item on its promised agenda, tax reform. A repeal of the ACA individual mandate might be slipped into the package. But so far, none of the other ACA tax increases are […]
Volume 73, no. 11 November 2017 The Report of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis (http://tinyurl.com/yaz9zw6a) has been released. It calls for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to review federal spending and invest “only in programs that achieve quantifiable goals and metrics.” It does not call for […]
Volume 73, no. 10 October 2017 Worse than the AIDS epidemic at its peak. Fatalities nearly double the global terrorism death toll. The “U.S. heroin crisis is so bad it’s raining ‘needles’.” In March 2017 alone, San Francisco collected 13,000 discarded syringes, compared with 2,900 in March 2016 (http://tinyurl.com/y8d8hy6a). Annual opioid overdose deaths nearly tripled […]
Volume 73, no. 9 September 2017 After a century of standing there in peace, statues erected c. 1920 by Democrats to commemorate Southern heroes of the Civil War are triggering violence across the land. President Trump was severely criticized for harshly condemning all the violent agitators, somehow implying a “moral equivalence” between “white supremacists” or […]
Volume 73, no. 8 August 2017 At one point in the Senate debate over ObamaCare, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) introduced an amendment that would allow insurers to offer plans that were not compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) so long as they offered at least one plan that was: an opening for a free […]
Volume 73, no. 7 July 2017 In the Vietnam War era, the body count meant actual corpses with a clear cause of death: gunfire, explosion, fire, etc. Each one had a name and could be buried with appropriate military honors. These days, body counts are in huge round numbers and have no identifiable, countable corpses. […]
Volume 73, no. 6 June 2017 “Resist!” signs are proliferating across the land. The “resist what?” is unstated. They do not appear at the same protests as the signs reading “9/11 beginning of the end of democracy: Shariah is the future” and “Islam will dominate.” But both sets of protesters want to bring down the […]
Volume 73, no. 5 May 2017 Affordable Care Act (ACA) supporter at the Medical Academic Center in Carmel, Indiana, the moderator posed a frequently asked question: “Have you found any common ground?” The same question might be asked of the Republicans’ Freedom Caucus and “moderate” Tuesday Group in the sparring over the narrowly passed American […]