Mike Magee New York Times columnists. Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll, provided a genuine public service this week in offering an interactive exploration of universal health care. Readers were asked to react to the same questions presented to a bevy of health gurus. Their 5 “Yes or No” questions were: 1. Do you support automatic […]
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The Planetary Patient
Mike Magee In 2005, I published a book called Healthy Waters in an attempt to raise environmental health and the deteriorating “planetary patient” as a pressing health care issue. My efforts were only modestly successful. Chapter 8 in the book was titled “Natural Water Disasters” and summarized the costs in human life and fortune as […]
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“blank”…. FOR ALL.
Mike Magee In a Washington Post interview this week, Rep. Donna Shalala, former head of HHS and now a member of Congress from Florida, suggested that democratic reformers focus on universal coverage by whatever means possible. In her view, this includes opening up voluntary access to Medicare (50+), Medicaid (more liberal entry standards), employer based insurance […]
Mike Magee Within 24 hours of the airing of Governor Ralph Northam’s 1984 Yearbook page last week, commentators were discussing the implications of his history of racial bias on his performance as a physician. Second year psychiatry resident Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu asked in STAT this week, “Why are we less forgiving of Ralph Northam as […]
Mike Magee The decade long battle by Republicans to “repeal and replace” Obamacare is fading slowly into the background. But as this week’s dust up, ignited by CNN’s Jake Tapper’s probing of Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s views on Medicare expansion revealed, we still have a long ways to go. By the next morning, two of […]
Mike Magee If there is a face for a “compassionate capitalist”, many would drop in the wise visage of Warren Buffett who famously declared “Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness.” Others have stated it differently while agreeing with results of the 2018 Bloomberg health efficiency index placing the U.S. dead last. The […]
Mike Magee On January 15, 2019, Admiral Karl Schulz informed 42,000 members of the Coast Guard and their families they would not be receiving their January paychecks because of President Trump’s wall-induced government shutdown. “I recognize the anxiety and uncertainty this situation places on you and your family, and we are working closely with service […]
