The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I'm not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other than to point out that how to rein in these costs has long been the proverbial political hot potato. Any attempt to limit spending or apply evidence-based guidelines to care runs into a buzz saw of criticism. Read more
When the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act passed Congress and signed into law by President Obama, you would think the mandate for all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, was something that came from the deep bowels of Liberalism. In fact it was originally a conservative idea and has been until Obama and a Democrat-controlled congress took it up. Read more
The United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Into the hands of nine people the future of health care has been laid. Those nine justices are made up of conservatives and liberal justices and the conservatives have the majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy sometimes moving to the left but not often. Read more
This week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that can only be described as historic. Any of you out there (in the U.S. anyway; I realize that my readership is international) who have paid even a passing attention to the news can't help but avoid reporting, debate, and polemics related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is often disparagingly referred to as "Obamacare." If the law is upheld, or even if most of the law is upheld, it will radically reshape health insurance in this country. Having spent 13 years in the trenches at cancer centers that see a high percentage of uninsured patients, I've come to the view that I hope the law is given a chance to go into full effect, because what we were doing before sure wasn't working. Read more
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