HealthCommentaryLooking Outside of Health to Fix U.S. Health Care I’ve been saying for some time that three sectors — Financial, Technology and Entertainment — will soon reshape American Health Care. What with? With financial assets, with IT innovation, and with an existing presence in the American home, which will soon be re-engineered for health. If […]
Same Old and Something New In a past Health Politics program (The Red Cross: Then and Now) I recounted the history of this revered organization, as well as its trials and tribulations. Among these have been chronic quality management problems with its blood business, chronic governance turmoil, high senior leadership turnover, and criticism of its management […]
Stupid Has No Age Limits The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently cheered a 2% drop in highway deaths in 2006. (WSJ 7-31/07, D2, Joseph B. White) The 42,642 deaths that year was the lowest rate per 100 million vehicle miles ever recorded. Most of the improvement was likely due to advances in auto […]
The Limits of Human KnowledgeOver the past few months, beekeepers in 36 U.S. states have been wondering what’s happened to their bees. Some have lost over 90% of their workers, who fly off and never return. Now researcher Ian Lipkin of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health believes he has the answer. In yet […]
There’s a war going on in America’s fast-food nation, and consumers will determine who wins. In several recent Health Politics programs and in some previous blogs, I’ve outlined the origins of “super sizing” and our corn-based diet, and I’ve discussed the courageous efforts of TGI Friday’s CEO to bring sanity to portion sizing. Well, this […]
I live near a little private airport. And every once in awhile, I think about what it might be like to pilot a little plane, taking off, floating up there in peace, bringing the plane in for a perfect landing. But then I look at the facts. There are about 228,000 of those type of […]
On July 10, Congress listened to former Surgeons General C. Everett Koop, David Satcher, and Richard Carmona on the future of this office and what might be done to improve what appears to be a steady decline in its effectiveness and usefulness to the American public. This morning’s reports focused on the comments of Dr. […]
