Here’s first press release I’ve seen claiming a PHR that works on your iPhone (from MedeFile). Having said that, as Apple advertises the iPhone as delivering the Internet (not a scaled down version) then presumably any web-accessible PHR is accessible on an iPhone, no?
Above the Fold
POLICY/INTERNATIONAL: John Cohn puts the boot in….nicely
I told John Cohn a while back that he was just too nice, and that he shouldn’t engage in the pointless argument with the free-marketeers about whether we treat cancer better or worse than the Europeans—especially as we do so much worse on many other measures. But John doesn’t listen to me—instead he takes the cancer argument and uses it to stamp all over the free-marketeers. At some point the referee should step in and stop this fight…
Meanwhile here’s the real problem. Next to John’s article on the CBS site is a video of Bush, and this is the text below it:
CBS News RAW: President Bush announced new proposals for the tax code intended to improve health care. His ideas counter Democratic proposals to nationalize the system.
Please could someone at CBS or anywhere else find me an example of a democrat wanting to “nationalize” the system. “Nationalize” means the government owning the production/service a la the Post Office or UK NHS. Not even Dennis Kucinich seems to be in favor of that. So what the hell are they talking about? I don’t know but neither do they. And, as they’re controlling a major news organization’s output, that is the problem.
HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS: Kaiser’s tame blogger at it again
I think that most of the latest fines for Kaiser, which are only vaguely related to its original problems at the kidney transplant unit and are for poor performance of peer review and handling complaints at its hospitals are generally much ado about nothing. I got quoted by Barbara Feder in the SJ Mercury News saying as much.
This does not, though, absolve Kaiser for not coming fully clean about what happened with the kidney transplant scandal, and for its reticence in having anyone at TPMG talk about it. That’s still the elephant in its living room that both KP and the Dept of Managed Health Care are ignoring.
PHYSICIANS/POLICY: NY Times discovers that FFS is a bad idea
Healthcare 101 from Alex Berenson at the NY Times–Fee for service is a bad idea. Not exactly advanced stuff, but at least it’s better than nothing.
PODCAST: Kelsey-Seybold tries to reinvent direct contracting
Kelsey-Seybold, the big multi-specialty group in Houston, TX, has plunged into direct contracting with employers in recent years. You wouldn’t expect that type of activity in Texas from a physician group, so I talked to Dr Patrick Carter, the medical director, managed care to find out more. Here’s the interview
POLICY: Are they that stupid, really?
Apparently the Administration is going to follow up on their threat to go after Michael Moore for his Sicko stunt of taking patients to Cuba.. This should give Sicko, which did OK for a documentary but not exactly Farenheight 911 numbers, a bit of a life at the box office.
But can the Bush Administration really be that stupid? (This is a rhetorical question, BTW)
POLICY: Great new site–Health08.org, and more on health IT in the election
Health08.org – Health care election news, analysis and events from KFF.
And it’s the baby of someone THCBers know and love but we can’t identify in public because the individual concerned used to have opinions, and KFF isn’t allowed to have them, let alone act on them—unlike the plethora of right wing think tanks that have been writing legislation in this country for the past 27 years.
Meanwhile Susan Blumenthal is back with her second in depth comparison of the election “positions” of the candidates regarding health care—this time focusing on health care IT.
BLOGS: HealthNewsReview.org: a daily checkup on U.S. health news coverage by Gary Schwitzer
Gary Schwitzer is Publisher
of HealthNewsReview.org. He’s a journalism professor at the
University of Minnesota, a member of the Association of Health Care
Journalists and, formerly, a 15-year television medical news reporter.
There’s probably never been as much high-quality health care journalism in the U.S. as there is
today, but, at the same time, there’s probably never been as much
schlock. We invite THCB readers to visit our
site – HealthNewsReview.org – a groundbreaking effort to provide
daily checkups of U.S health news coverage.
A team of more than two dozen
reviewers from across the U.S. – organized and funded by the Foundation
for Informed Medical Decision Making – regularly reviews health care news
stories reported by about 60 major news organizations. The reviewers
have different backgrounds – journalism, public health, medicine,
health services research – but they apply the same 10 standardized
criteria in their reviews of stories. (See “How We Rate Stories”)
After a little more than a
year of operation, and after reviewing 400 stories, our database allows
us to hold up a pretty clear mirror to news decision-makers about their
performance.
QUALITY/INTERNATIONAL: A great check list and more about EBM
Humphrey Taylor from Harris mentioned to me earlier this year that one thing Americans don’t realize is how much other health care systems are changing—while ours seems stuck in 1987. One case in major point is the UK where serious changes in terms of more money being spent on health care (a designed increase of nearly 2% of GDP), a reorganization of primary care called Primary Care Trusts, a major investment in IT for healthcare, and a significant change towards paying primary care docs for outcomes have all been going on in the last few years. In fact probably the most Americans realize about this is the scene in Sicko where the British GP discusses his salary (much higher than PCPs get in the US), shows off his fancy car and nice house, and explains that he gets paid more for keeping his patients healthy. All true and all recent phenomena.
PHARMA: Wall Street, Cancer, and the FDA: A Cautionary Tale by Maggie Mahar
Maggie Mahar writes on healthcare, economics and public policy. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Barrons, Institutional Investor and may other publications. A regular contributor for THCB, her most recent book is "Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Healthcare Costs So Much." She was recently named a fellow at The Century Foundation.
Only in America do physicians
who evaluate new drugs need bodyguards.
You may have read about the
brouhaha surrounding Provenge, a vaccine designed to extend the lives
of men suffering from late-stage prostate cancer. In March, a Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel voted 13 to 4 to recommend
approval. The next day, shares of Dendreon, the drug’s sponsor, doubled.
But shareholders did not celebrate
for long. Two of the dissenting votes were cast by the panel’s two
prostate cancer specialists: Sloan-Kettering’s Howard Scher and the
University of Michigan’s Maha Hussain. And they did not just vote
“no”—following the hearing, both wrote to the FDA arguing that
Dendreon offered no solid evidence that Provenge works.
The FDA listened. And in May
it told the company it wouldn’t approve the drug until it had more
data. That is when the two oncologists began receiving threatening e-mails,
phone calls, and letters. Many were anonymous.
