Health Policy: All Articles and Books

The Conversation: Cut Health Costs? Here's A Prescription

Erin Drankoski — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:58:00 -0400

There is widespread agreement that if federal health care reform passes, making it work will depend in great part on getting a handle on spiraling medical costs that already consume nearly one of every five dollars spent in the United States.

The Obstacles to Real Health-Care Reform

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:17:00 -0400

American presidents have tried seven times to bring us into the community of nations that provide health care to all citizens. Seven times the effort failed. More accurately, it was blocked. In the 1940s, the anti-reform movement was led by doctors, through the American Medical Association. In the 1990s, it was led by the insurance and small-business lobbies.

Does the Vaccine Matter?

Erin Drankoski — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:05:00 -0400

Drive too fast along Red Lion Road, beside Philadelphia's Northeast Airport, and you will miss the low-rise cement building where the biotech company MedImmune has been quietly pumping out swine flu vaccine at about a million doses a week. Through the summer and fall, workers wearing protective gear that covered them from head to toe brewed up batches of live, genetically modified flu virus. Robots then injected tiny doses of virus-laden fluid into glass vials, which were mounted into nasal spritzers, labeled, and readied for shipment at the direction of the

The Problem Is Minority Rule

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:21:00 -0400

The health care drama in the U.S. Senate is cresting. After months of hearings--and decades of dithering--it is time to see if the United States is going to remain the only advanced industrial nation in the world that does not provide universal health care.

Health-Care Cooperatives Can Work

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:52:00 -0400

Health-care cooperatives have gotten a bad rap. But if properly designed, they could offer quite a lot to both the left and the right, as well as to anyone interested in expanding health-care coverage and reducing costs.

Support for Health Care Reform Is Building … From the Right

Erin Drankoski — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:11:00 -0400

Bill O'Reilly supports a public option in the health care debate, given that it will provide cheaper insurance to those who can't afford it and isn't intended to replace insurance providers as the status quo for the majority; Tommy Thompson, W.'s secretary for Health and Human Services and a former four-term governor of Wisconsin, has praised the Senate's proposed reforms.

Government Orders Columbia to Tell Patients 'True Nature' of Drug Study

Erin Drankoski — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:56:00 -0400

The man who would be known as Patient No. 1 emerged from routine open-heart surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in stable condition. Then he began to bleed uncontrollably. Surgeons rushed him back to the operating room to reopen his chest, but by the time they could stop the hemorrhaging, Patient No. 1 was barely breathing and in a coma.

On Aug. 15, 2000, shortly before he was discharged on his way to a nursing home, a physician wrote a terse final diagnosis in his chart: "Medical disaster."

Obama's Cunning Co-Op Plan

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:31:00 -0400

Throughout the healthcare debate, President Obama has not always appeared very "presidential". He hasn't engaged in LBJ-like arm twisting or FDR-like brinksmanship, or exerted the strong leadership that the office of the presidency has been known to possess. Other than his brilliant healthcare speech in early September, Obama has mostly seemed content to lay low while the Senate thrashes out the details.

Bobby Jindal's Brave Move

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:34:00 -0400

Bobby Jindal, the 38-year-old Indian-American governor of Louisiana, and a rising star in Republican circles, did a brave thing on Monday morning: He took to the op-ed page of The Washington Post to urge his fellow GOPers to "join the battle of ideas" on health care. That is, Republicans should put forward their own health care plan. And to get that process rolling, he put forth ten ideas of his own.

What Obama Doesn't Get About Americans and Health Care, Part 2

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:05:00 -0400

In the first part of this two-part piece, I noted that the hot issue-within-an-issue for Washington health care wonks is "bending the curve" on health care costs--that is, reducing future increases.

Even Barack Obama is talking the "bend" talk. In an interview with The Washington Post in July, the president used the "b-word" no less than 11 times. In this particular passage, he said that he wants to "bend" the cost curve, not only for government expenditures, but also for private-sector expenditures:

It's Not Socialized World After All

Erin Drankoski — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:02:00 -0400

During last year's Republican presidential primary season, candidate Rudy Giuliani succinctly captured what millions of Americans think about health care abroad. "These countries that say they provide universal coverage -- they pay a price for it, you know," Giuliani told his audience. "They do it by rationing care, by long waiting lines, and by limiting, or I should say eliminating a patient's choice."

Healthcare Can Get America Working

Erin Drankoski — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:03:00 -0400

With official unemployment in the US hovering around 10 per cent, and actual levels much higher when the underemployed and discouraged are counted, the most urgent priority is job creation. But efforts to get America working again must be informed by the striking fact that most employment growth in the past decade has been concentrated in three sectors: healthcare, education and government, mostly state and local public services.

To Succeed, Obama Needs to Channel His Inner LBJ

Erin Drankoski — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:43:00 -0400

Following President Barack Obama's speech on healthcare last week, several pundits said it was a performance worthy of Harry "Give 'em Hell" Truman. After his election, he was likened to Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But for the coming battle over healthcare reform, Mr Obama needs to step into the shoes of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Especially when it comes to lining up votes from recalcitrant members of his own party, LBJ's brawling, southern style of trench politics is the one best suited for the current challenge.

Uninsured Like Me

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:04:00 -0400

Now and then a moment occurs that clarifies the nature of American politics like a flash of lightning over a prairie landscape. Such a moment occurred on Sept. 9 during President Obama's televised address to a joint session of Congress about healthcare. As the president explained that illegal immigrants would not be eligible for benefits under the plan he supported, Joe Wilson, a conservative Republican member of Congress from South Carolina, shocked the chamber and the television audience by shouting, "You lie!"

Senate "Minority Rule" Is the Disease, Not the Cure, for Health Care Reform

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:23:00 -0400

As the nation girds itself for an epic battle over health care reform, all eyes will be on the U.S. Senate. That chamber, whose members often refer to themselves as the world's most deliberative body, more accurately can be described as the least representative body outside Britain's House of Lords, where "minority rule" strangles reform on a regular basis.

How To Save Health Reform

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:55:00 -0400

After defeating President Clinton's health reform effort in 1993, Republicans achieved a stunning victory that ended 40 years of Democratic control of Congress. And so it's easy to see why most congressional Republicans are convinced that there is no advantage in working constructively with President Obama now.

The Speech And The Public Option

Erin Drankoski — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:51:00 -0400

The last ten minutes of Barack Obama's health care speech, invoking the legacy of Ted Kennedy and emphasizing concern for others as an essential part of "the American character," were powerful and affecting. Eschewing the professorial tone he has too often struck when discussing health care in recent months, Obama spoke instead about "large heartedness" and the "terror and helplessness" any parent would feel to have a sick child go without treatment because of money. He also said "the danger of too much government is matched by the perils

Health Debate Short on Evidence-Based Science

Erin Drankoski — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:56:00 -0400

The public's faith in President Barack Obama's plan for health care reform is fading. Proposals ranging from the public insurance option to reimbursing physicians for end-of-life counseling are mired in a debate that's as overheated as August temperatures. Even the seemingly self-evident idea that the nation has a moral duty to make sure all citizens have basic access to health care is up for grabs. But there's one aspect of health care reform that California voters support almost universally: better medical evidence.

Can Obama Give 'Em Hell Before It's Too Late?

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:25:00 -0400

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they

Why Insurance As We Know It Is Doomed

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:28:00 -0400

Huntington's disease is unusually cruel. Symptoms tend to emerge in early middle age. One's cognitive functions waste away until dementia sets in, and victims are extremely vulnerable to heart disease, physical injury and suicidal depression. Indeed, according to one study, as many as 27% of sufferers attempt suicide. The condition is also highly predictable. If you have one parent with Huntington's disease, you have a 50% chance of inheriting it.