By ROGER COLLIER For the first time, the federal government may be able to sidestep Congress and impose its own Medicare cost-containment policies. At least, that’s what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act promises in creating the Independent Payment...

By ED PULLEN, MD On Independence Day I thought it would be interesting to look at the causes of death of some of our famous Revolutionary era patriots. When I started researching this I anticipated early deaths from infections and...

By PATRICIA SALBER I was debating merits of DIY healthcare with my buddy, Brian Klepper, PhD -healthcare analyst and pundit extraordinaire - the other day. He is not a fan, preferring instead to have better, stronger, more informed, technologically enabled...

By NAOMI FREUNDLICH For now, all those physicians who threatened to make a mass exodus from Medicare can take a breather. Last week, the House voted to once again delay the mandated 21% cut in physician fees by another six...

By Matthew Holt This week the AP published a long piece about overtreatment at the end of life. I encourage you to read it. The article featured the story of Za: The doctors finally let Rosaria Vandenberg go home. For...

By PAUL LEVY Many people involved in hospitals wonder how it can be financially prudent for investors to put their money into for-profit ventures that buy non-profit hospitals. (Examples here and here.) After all, the argument goes, the newly privatized...

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE Yesterday, ONC held a fine gathering at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC. There were experts, ONC Tiger team members and cutting edge technology vendors displaying and discussing platforms and software for providing patients the opportunity to...

Obama administration CTO Aneesh Chopra was a keynote speaker at the Health 2.0 conference in Washington last month. Here he talks about why the White House thinks open data policies will revolutionize healthcare, the administration's plans to encourage innovation in...

By ROGER COLLIER As might be expected of reform legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act places a lot of emphasis on innovation. Reasonably enough, most of the potential changes—at least in Medicare—are to be preceded by pilot or...

By MAGGIE MAHAR Kaiser Health News (KHN) reports that “the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to run the agency overseeing Medicare appears to be languishing.” Friday, KHN’s “Health Policy Week in Review” quoted a story that appeared in the New...

By ED PULLEN, MD Many of the breakthrough drugs of the 1980-1990′s are now available as generics, and pharmacy competition has led to great bargains for patients needing these drugs. The 1980’s and 1990’s were a golden age in the...

By ROB LAMBERTS, MD The post that forever doomed the world to have my writing forced onto them was one called Shame, in which I describe my frustration with how society stigmatizes people who are obese. It was picked up...

By Matthew Holt At the AHIP Conference I got a chance to sit down with McKesson Health Solution's Senior VP of Care Management Jim Hardy and VP of Product Development Kevin Maher. The two men were more than happy to...

By JOHN GOODMAN The International Monetary Fund is warning that the U.S. national debt will exceed 100% of GDP within the next five years, and economists both here and abroad are expressing alarm. The debt problem is mainly an entitlements...

By NAOMI FREUNDLICH As Congress once again wrestles with “the doctor fix”—yet another postponement of the 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement that went into effect this month—the media has been swirling with stories warning of a mass exodus of doctors...

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine (Identifying and Eliminating the Roadblocks to Comparative-Effectiveness Research) three authors share their experience in running a head-to-head trial of Avastin (bevacizumab) versus Lucentis (ranibizumab) for wet age-related macular...

By Matthew Holt I don’t often write about Footy any more on THCB, but England is out of the World Cup today, stuffed 4–1 by Germany. So I thought I’d give my opinion, and for the moment I’m dropping my...