Our Future Under the Federal JackBoot
It's Not So Pretty
I'm not a particular fan of the American Medical Association. In my view, it is too enmeshed with currying favor with the federal government (also known as partnering) to be an effective advocate for either patients or physicians. But occasionally the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) publishes some worthwhile reading. The latest issue has a commentary about the collision of scientific principles with interest-group advocacy politics and an editorial about the futility of central or top-down micromanagement, which are very interesting and say a lot about the future of healthcare, in particular our ability (or lack thereof) to make informed decisions for ourselves, in our increasingly federalized system.
I can't republish the articles here but the references (links) for those interested are:
Science, Politics, and Values: The Politicization of Professional Practice Guidelines
Kraemer and Gostin
JAMA. 2009; 301: 665-667.
The Elusive Quest for Quality and Cost Savings in the Medicare Program
John Z. Ayanian, MD, MPP
JAMA. 2009; 301(6): 668-670.
EDIT 2-11-14: Time to update the Title to more appropriately reflect reality.
Watching Dr. Emanuel interviewed by Chris Wallace gave me the creeps. This guy is a Provost at a medical school, no less. Holy crap.
More Mengele than Osler if you ask me. Which is especially bizarre considering his ethnic heritage. But he’s been in the Ivory Tower ever since finishing his training in medicine so I suspect he has little if any understanding of the real world informing his ‘research’ in ‘bioethics’. Hard for me to comprehend how a Jew could embrace a medical philosophy placing the ‘good of the state’ above the needs of the individual.