Saturday, January 31, 2004

New poetry column.

›
Number 30.

Bush reportedly knew of higher Medicare costs

›
According to a syndicated article from the Washington Post , GW knew the true price-tag on Medicare reform months ago. So all the time I w...

Boston-area father wins case against fertility clinic.

›
As reported in the Boston Globe on Sunday: "In one of the first legal cases in Massachusetts involving the largely unregulated field ...
Friday, January 30, 2004

Medicare prescription benefit to cost 1/3 more than originally estimated.

›
It seems like a pittance, really, just a little rivulet pouring into the ocean of red ink produced by this administration. For what it'...

Report Assails Hospital Lapses

›
The L.A. Times today reported a chilling tale of a hospital run amok. According to the story , "Nurses at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew...

Florida appeals court strikes down state antikickback statute.

›
This won't have much impact on Texas' AKB law, which slavishly adheres to federal standards, including federal safe harbors. But, f...
Saturday, January 24, 2004

F.D.A. Begins Push to End Drug Imports.

›
The N.Y. Times has a good piece on the FDA's renewed efforts to stop imports of lower-priced drugs from Canada. (The link is the the p...

UK has its own Peter Singer.

›
The Sunday papers are all carrying a story about the comments of a bioethicist, John Harris, who is a member of the British Medical Associa...
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Tort reform and malpractice premiums.

›
From Health Affairs, a very respected health policy journal: Malpractice Insurance Premiums Lower In States With Caps On Damage Awards, Acc...
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Health law and policy

›
Interesting book review in tomorrow's JAMA: The Privatization of Health Care Reform: Legal and Regulatory Perspectives edited by M. ...
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Congressional Budget Office doubts economic impact of tort reform on health costs.

›
As we've, ahem, been saying here all along, tort reform is not the way to get a handle on rising health care costs. Now the bipartisan ...

Institute of Medicine report: US should aim for universal coverage by 2010.

›
The IOM has added its voice to the steadily rising chorus calling for aggressive steps to cover all Americans (including the 43 million curr...

Emily Dickinson.

›
Margo Jefferson has a nice end-piece in today's NY Times Book Review ( "I Don't Know How She Does It" ) about Emily Dicki...
Friday, January 16, 2004

The Constitution and the war on terrorism (II).

›
The last time Tony Lewis wrote an op ed for his old employer, The New York Times , before today ( see below ) it appeared in the paper on F...

The Constitution and the war on terrorism (I).

›
Anthony Lewis's op ed in today's N.Y. Times is (i) a wonderful reminder of how valuable Lewis' voice has been (and occasionally...
Thursday, January 15, 2004

Unanimous Supreme Court victory for the children of Texas.

›
I can't remember the last time the Supreme Court justices all agreed in an Eleventh Amendment case, but it happened yesterday in Frew v....
Saturday, January 10, 2004

Ambiguous Gifts: When Patients Give and Doctors Take

›
Good article by Denise Grady on VIP patients, gifts from patients, George Harrison's signed guitar, and the morally ambiguous topic of ...

Seniority: Two Holes in the Medicare Drug Law/

›
Finally, somebody is asking the questions that need to be asked about the Medicare reform law signed by Dubyah last month. In an article ...
Friday, January 09, 2004

Dallas Morning News: public health comes first.

›
Thank God the Dallas Morning News has weighed in on the public-health issues facing Dallas County with an editorial that urges the County ...

2002 shows higher rate of health-care inflation than 2001.

›
Is anyone in the health care industry really surprised to learn that, "[f]ueled by rising hospital costs and health insurance premiums,...