US healthcare costs are unsustainable and a large amount of money is being wasted on unnecessary treatment. There was general agreement about these statements among the audience, speakers and panelists at the recent Avoiding Avoidable Care conference, held in Boston. The summit was organized by the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the New America Foundation, and […]
Tag: US healthcare
Muir Gray: How doctors working in systems could rescue healthcare
“We have nothing as bad as America’s worst, and nothing as good as America’s best,” wise words said to me by someone many years ago, and this principle has stood the test of time. There are certainly many dreadful things in American healthcare, but there are also wonderful services and excellent innovation with a rigorous […]
Martin McShane: Integrated reflections concluded
Here is my third and final blog on the USA trip: After Seattle’s integrated care organisations, we visited CalPERS. They fund $6.7bn worth of healthcare for 1.3 million people (roughly twice what we have per person in Lincolnshire). They see themselves as “active” purchasers: managing the market to reduce costs. About two thirds of their members […]
Martin McShane: Integrated reflections continued
Following our visit to Kaiser Permanente, we travelled north to Seattle and visited the Virginia Mason hospital and Group Health. Linked but distinct, the relationship between the two provided a contrast to Kaiser Permanente – though, as organisations seeking integrated care, there were common themes. We spent a day at Group Health and yet again […]
David Kerr: Gordon Gekko and the NHS
Here in United States, the latest must have app contains software that blocks any mention of the actor, Charlie Sheen. Until recently, Sheen was the highest paid television star in the world but was fired last week after making caustic comments about his employers in public. Subsequently, he has just been awarded the Guinness World […]
David Kerr: Social medicine
“The UK coalition government’s proposals for health reform have generated much heat without a great deal of light. One predictable response has been the “concern” that the private sector is about to take over the running of the health service. Worse still is the prospect of turning the NHS into a clone of the US […]
Vidhya Alakeson on US healthcare reform
The theatre of politics has been on full display in Washington of late. Last week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in March last year that, among many other things, will ensure that more Americans have health insurance coverage. The vote was largely symbolic for the […]
Richard Smith asks: Is it unpatriotic to criticise the NHS?
I’m worried that in the highly charged atmosphere created by the extraordinary US debate on health care my published anxieties about the NHS might brand me as unpatriotic. Perhaps Fox News or some equally evil, right wing American media outlet will track down my words in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and broadcast […]
Vidhya Alakeson on the US election
After the Democratic Convention last week, when healthcare featured in almost every major speech, I had been waiting all week to see whether the Republicans would talk about it at all during their Convention in Minneapolis. Yesterday, on the last day of the Convention, healthcare reform finally got a mention when John McCain took to […]