Spending More But Getting Less

Why can’t the increases in health care quality keep up with the increases in cost? The quality of health care in the United States improved by an average of 2.3% per year between 1994 and 2005, reports the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but in the same period health care expenditures rose by a […]

Fear Levels and Health

What we’re still learning from 9/11In a recent Health Commentary essay I addressed the need for positive leadership in our society, specifically in creating the potential for a unified approach to reforming our health care system. I’ve been interested in positive leadership for many years, have written about it extensively, and believe we are suffering […]

The State of Employer-Sponsored Coverage

Only half of workers have health coverage through their employers. Is this model feasible into the future?A detailed new study from the Economics Policy Institute confirms what many of us suspect but haven’t had the data to easily nail down. This weightily-titled report by Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz – A Decade of Decline: The […]

Medical Communicators Take Center Stage

AMA conference helps medical experts learn to communicate vital health information In my most recent blog, “Trusting the Experts for Accurate Health Information,” April 1, 2008, I suggested that the media needs to be responsible for providing accurate, reliable health information to the public. From that blog: “Not only is it the responsibility of the […]

Let Your Voice Be Heard

The ‘Health Care Idea Generator” — an interesting new concept from American Public MediaI recently received a nice note from Brad Robideau at American Public Media, producer and distributor of public radio programs, including Marketplace. He was alerting me to a great participatory platform they’ve created called the Health Care Idea Generator. According to Brad, […]

Genetics Meets Preventive Health Care

Can our system transform fast enough to catch up to our science?The people, and the people caring for the people, in the United States and around the world, are just beginning to absorb what the term “preventive health care” really means. Until recently, it was enough to simply think of it as something different from […]

‘Consumers Checkbook’: An Open Response To HHS Secretary Leavitt

HHS says that it wants transparency, but its actions speak differently A few months ago, the two of us (Brian Klepper, top photo, Michael Millenson, bottom photo) – both long-time advocates for transparency and accountability – posted separate comments on Secretary Mike Leavitt’s blog. Brian asked Secretary Leavitt to square his support of "Chartered Value Exchanges” with […]

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