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Section: Blogs/Opinion

Alfie’s Life

The baby Alfie Evans has died. Born in Liverpool with a degenerative brain condition, Alfie had been in a semi-vegetative state for over a year. Against his parents’ wishes, the hospital took Alfie off ventilation. The parents had wanted to move him to a Vatican hospital in Rome that would have kept him on life-support. […]

May 2, 2018

The Big Idea

The American health care system is an expensive, sprawling mess. The Republican Party’s brightest idea for how to fix it? Make health insurance worse. Here’s what the GOP has in mind: Weakened protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Skimpier benefits that leave out coverage for important medical needs. Less protection from financial harm due to illness. […]

April 30, 2018

President Donald Trump

Keep Fighting

The Trump Administration has found yet another way to undermine the Affordable Care Act and the individual health insurance market. Lucky for Washington consumers, Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has their backs. Kreidler is protecting consumers against the Trump Administration’s ill-conceived attempt to allow Americans to sidestep the requirements of the ACA and sign up for […]

April 25, 2018

Health Insurance

Improve Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has endured attack after attack, yet it has not collapsed. Instead, it proves repeatedly that it fills a substantial gap in the U.S. health-care system. This should finally cause some reflection among those who have been trying to kill it. President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services […]

April 23, 2018

Pro-Life Violence

How many terrorist attacks have taken place on American soil over the last 40 years? The real answer is almost certainly larger and far sadder than you think. According to the National Abortion Federation, community health centers and abortion providers have witnessed the following atrocities since 1977: 655 anthrax threats 383 general death threats 373 property […]

April 18, 2018

Planned Parenthood

Treating Alzheimer’s

I’m envious. One of my medical school classmates climbed a mountain with his patient, and not just any mountain. Dr. Malcolm Bilimoria, a surgical oncologist, and Ken Brown, “a survivor of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas,” ascended the 19,341-foot Mount Kilimanjaro. That’s right. Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. I’m envious because none of my […]

April 16, 2018

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Sacrificing Veterans

With some seeking to further privatize veterans’ health care, and hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, sacrifices are going to have to be made. Let’s hope Ronny Jackson, Donald Trump’s nominee to be the new Veterans Affairs secretary, can ensure few of those fall on the veterans themselves. Former VA secretary Dr. David Shulkin […]

April 11, 2018

Sacrificing Veterans

Life with Rare Disease

You get that call you feared. You have cancer. Hours go by. You decide how you’re going to tell your family. You research treatments and statistics. You start to wonder if you’re going to die. This was a reality for Frank Rivera. In 2004 he started having breathing issues and couldn’t walk for any amount […]

April 9, 2018

Life with Rare Disease

Sports, Sponsorships and Obesity

Last September, the National Football League struck a deal with Frito-Lay that allowed the company to produce limited-edition bags of Tostitos tortilla chips, with each package bearing the logo of one of 19 featured NFL teams. Several months earlier, Major League Baseball announced that Nathan’s Famous would be its first-ever official hot dog. Now the […]

April 4, 2018

Sports Sponsorships and Obesity

No Experience

You can’t make this stuff up: President Trump has announced he will nominate a medical doctor who has no discernible management experience to run the second-largest agency in the federal government. Can presidents be sued for malpractice? The man Trump has named to become secretary of veterans affairs, Dr. Ronny Jackson, happens to be the […]

April 2, 2018

Speak Up!

Kudos to tennis superstar extraordinaire Serena Williams for insisting on being heard relative to her recent medical needs. Though she has reached celebrity status and money is no object, she was forced to insist that her medical team listen to her and act accordingly. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as stating, “Of all the […]

March 28, 2018

Executing Dealers

Vengeance is not a public health policy. But it’s implicit in a policy measure coming out of the White House, which would attempt to solve the opioid crisis with a plan that includes sentencing some high-intensity traffickers to death. It may feel good, and for some segment of the population, vengeance may even look good. […]

March 27, 2018

Executing Dealers

Religious Refusals

During the Obama administration, I was the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. There, I was privileged to spearhead the issuance of regulations implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the groundbreaking civil rights provision that — among other things — was […]

March 21, 2018

Religious Refusuals

Anti-Choice Tactics

Soon after learning she was pregnant, Cherisse walked into what looked like a doctor’s office in the hopes of receiving medical information and guidance. Instead, she was shown graphic videos of abortion procedures before being sent to another facility for an ultrasound. At the second location, she was told, inaccurately, that if she ended her […]

March 19, 2018

Anti Choice Tactics

Wary and Alert

As a family doctor, I prescribe opioids judiciously. My training taught me to be careful with each and every pill I prescribe, as each script could add another victim to the opioid crisis at the forefront of our country’s current health agenda. However, despite those efforts ― and the efforts of so many others in […]

March 14, 2018

Do Black Lives Matter?

The decision to expand Medicaid in Virginia should be a no-brainer: Accept federal dollars already allocated to the state and give affordable health care coverage to nearly 400,000 uninsured Virginians. But for years, Republicans have refused to expand Medicaid and, as a result, are killing poor people and people of color. Currently, hundreds of thousands […]

March 12, 2018

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Short-Term Policies

Short-term health insurance is sometimes scoffed at as “sham insurance.” But to those who turn to it in need, this kind of insurance offers vital protection from unexpected medical costs. The Trump administration’s plan to extend how long it lasts makes sense. Short-term plans offer temporary coverage for many of the same things standard health […]

March 7, 2018

Short Term Policies

Trump Doesn’t Care

Republicans in Washington are so far proving they can’t be taken seriously to improve the nation’s health or health care system. After first submitting a budget that aims to force austerity on Medicaid and Medicare recipients to pay for last year’s tax cuts that are going largely to corporations and the wealthy, the Trump administration has now followed […]

March 5, 2018