phenomenalplace

Dear Dr. Val, I enjoy reading your blog and the contributions from many of the leading medical bloggers that appear on it. Occasionally, the spirit moves me to post a comment, but for the second time in just a few months my comment has not made it to your blog. Why? I also tweeted you to ask if there are technical difficulties peculiar to my comments, but I did not get a reply. Why? I know that some bloggers have a policy about what comments get rejected. I know that I will not accept abusive, profane or overtly marketing comments on my blog. I am sure you have the same standards. So, why not accept mine? I read Dr. Novella's post with great interest yesterday, and got passionate enough to write a pretty lengthy response. I am grateful to you and to Dr. Novella for allowing me to think through some of the issues that I commented on. But I was hoping for a dialogue... How will we ever arrive at mutual understanding or even better individual understanding without a cogent dialogue? ...

Any big health care bill will be full of compromises—political or otherwise. But this bill doesn’t even come close to deserving to be called “health care reform.”As the Democrats make their final push to pass their health care bill many of them, and most notably the President, are arguing that it should be passed because it is the “right thing to do whatever the polls say.”Their argument is

Away from Washington people I talk to are just amazed at what the Democrats are in the process of doing on health care.What I think the Democratic leadership is missing is that this is no longer about passing a health care bill in the minds of lots of these voters—a majority of voters from what the polls say.To these people, this is about Democratic arrogance. What the polls don't measure is the

Why Rush Vendor Certification of EHR Technologies?by DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPERA surprise move by ONC/HHS indicates the wheels may be falling off health IT reform at about the same rate they've fallen off Democrats' broader health reforms.David Blumenthal and his staff have unveiled two separate plans to test and certify EHR technology products and services. We don't think this is a good

In case you missed Peggy Noonan's column in the WSJ yesterday, let me suggest it is worth your time.I think she hit the nail on the head:It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year.What a disaster it has been.At best it was a waste of history's time, a struggle that will

After the Failure of ReformbyBrian Klepper and David C. KibbeThe stalemate in the bi-partisan health care summit was cast the moment it was announced. Republicans demanded that the reform process start anew, and Mr. Obama insisted on the Senate bill as the framework going forward. The President may now offer a more modest reform bill that can demonstrate some progress on the health care crisis,

Everyone agrees our health care system is unsustainable and too often unfair. At the White House health care summit, that was the only common ground between Democrats and Republicans.Many Americans are either left-brain liberals or right-brain conservatives, with the remainder somewhere in the middle. These left- and right-brain types look at the same facts but come to different conclusions—no