At the end of each year I email my friends and contacts a letter. It’s not much about health care, but it’s a little about me and what I care about. So it’s up over at my scandalously under-used personal blog — Matthew’s end of year 2006 letter
Matthew Holt
POLICY: Health Care Problem? Check the New York Times Psyche
Hi, if you’ve wandered in from the Typepad blog of the day site, welcome!
Today the NYT lets its rational lefty business reporter Anna Bernasek make a rational if obvious and basic case for single payer health care, even though she quotes Vic Fuchs as if he was a leading opponent. He’s not—he’s just a realist and he supports his own version of what the real opponents at Cato and Manhattan would call single payer.
The article is called Health Care Problem? Check the American Psyche. Of course the real psyche that needs checking is that of whoever it is who controls (if anyone) what the NY Times writes about health care policy in its business pages. Last year they let several just appalling articles by Gina Kolata and David Leonhardt be published on health care spending—not to mention the odd op-ed by loony libertarians who think that the number of Nobel prizes for medicine awarded is a proxy for a good health care system.
And like a dog licking its own sore, they just could not stop.
Hopefully, with the debate getting real on health care, today’s article is a sign that the paper of record is beginning to be slightly less dense. And may even allow some rational voices to have a rational debate…
POLICY: Peak Oil and Healthcare by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D
Dan Bednarz from Energy & Healthcare Consultants in Pittsburgh, PA is pretty concerned that you health care types don’t seem to be concerned about Peak Oil. What you say, you’ve never heard of Peak Oil? Better read this then!
America’s healthcare predicament will be resolved in the context of the worldwide energy emergency idiomatically known as “peak oil.” In short, the era of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is entering its twilight and medicine — virtually cut-off from this awareness—is exposed to the consequences. Like any other system healthcare requires energy and resources to function; fossil fuels, especially petroleum, provide both.
BLOGS: Why blogging matters, even if it’s only a little
I wrestle everyday with whether writing this or any blog makes any sense from a business or personal perspective. I cringe when friends and colleagues tell me they’re starting a blog, because I know how hard it is to keep going. I also know how long it takes to build readership. But every so often I go back and read something I wrote and forgot about, and I’m more than a little impressed with myself.
So for my last post of the year I want to rebut the recent article by Joseph Rago of the WSJ in which he basically said blogs are a boring waste of time and that bloggers don’t do original work.
There are three reasons why he’s wrong.
TECH: Health2.0–this time it’s different?
Dmitriy is worried that Health 2.0 is turning into a bubble. His piece Health Social Networking & Web 2.0 Bubble is a response to his rather prominent featuring in Laura Landros’ WSJ column. He’s concerned that it’s yet another bubble with no business model behind it. I’ll say more about this later, but there are two reasons to be less pessimistic than Dmitriy.
First, the business model is better because a) the tools are significantly cheaper to build and b) one player (You know who) has figured out how to build an advertising supported business online that really works—and is insanely profitable.
Second, even if there are no great riches to be had by independent Web2.0 and Health2.0 companies, the tools, techniques and technologies of Health2.0 will be adopted by the health care system and the consumers of health care. And that will be the most important feature of the entire “movement”.
BLOGS: that #1 health care blogger can’t be kept quiet
Amy Tenderich becomes ever more famous: TypePad Featured Blogs: Diabetes Mine.
But keep your eye on that site for Sunday (hint!)
HEALTH PLANS: Wellpoint not out of the California woods yet
This Wellpoint policy retroactive cancellation story is not exactly going away —
Doctors seek to sue Blue Cross
TECH: Laura Landro picks up on Health2.0
Now I know that Laura Landro reads (rather than just reccomends) this blog. Today in her The Informed Patient column in the WSJ she discusses the burgeoning patient to patient discussion movement, which is a big part of Health2.0. On the other hand she could just have been talking to Dmitriy who gets plenty of press in her column for his work at TMBN. Others getting mentions include DailyStrength, Healia, and OrganizedWisdom. There’s also quite a bit of discussion of Second Life, which I have been trying my hardest to avoid—given that I waste most of my life online as it is…
But her description of what’s happening behind Health2.0 is excellent:
The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends. At the same time, traditional Web sites that once offered cumbersome pages of static data are developing blogs, podcasts, and customized search engines to deliver the most relevant and timely information on health topics.
TECH/CONSUMERS: Revolution Health & MedBillManager
OK for those of you desperate to take a look at Revolution Health’s "invite only" site, here is an officially blessed invitation to go sign-up (and of course to look at what $500m buys you!).
Meanwhile, at the other end of the opulence scale, start-up Medbillmanager is attempting to compete with Revolution/Intuit et al in the way consumers deal with their medical and insurance billing/payment.
Obviously it’s early days. But it’s well worth taking a look at both of these two sites to see how new web technologies are putting information, organizational capability, and just maybe power, into the hands of consumers.
BLOGS: Coming out of the woodwork
Those of you bored with the same old health care blogs might be interested to know that there are some more out there.
Veteran physician commentator Dick Reece’s medinnovationblog is starting with a long series of posts about “innovations” in care delivery. It’s mostly aimed at a physician audience but it’s thoughtful stuff—Dick does though need to realize that “blog” is to “post” as “newspaper” is to “article”.
From the crazed Republic of California come two new political health care blogs. Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Weintraub has a host of guest bloggers on California health care at CrossRoads. Those of us too cynical to think that anything meaningful can ever happen on the state level will note that not all of them share that view.
Anthony Wright, head of California single payer advocacy group Health Access, is a contributor to that blog. His own organization also has its own new blog on which he and Hanh Kim Quach are the main authors.
