Primary Care
Health Care and the Broader Economic Crisis
10/02/08
I used to worry that the economic turmoil resulting from health care's relentless cost explosion would cascade into all other economic sectors. Now it appears that the credit crisis could push health care over the edge. The silver lining is that a sudden spike in the pressure on health care organizations could facilitate a transition to the meaningful reforms that are necessary to resolve the crisis.
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Rebuilding the Medical Home: What Walgreens Surely Sees
03/27/08
In March 2007, Walgreens suddenly acquired the two largest worksite clinic firms. Combined with their convenience care clinics, this gave them more than 500 primary care sites nationally. They estimate that there are 7,600 employer campuses in America with 1,000 or more employees onsite. Is this the beginning of the true corporatization of primary care. And if corporations come to own primary care's referral base, can't they capture all of health care?
Bad Medicine: How The AMA Undermined Primary Care In America
12/13/07
Unknown to most of us, over the last several years a proprietary AMA subsidiary, the RVS Update Committee, has been the sole advisor to CMS on physician reimbursement. Dominated by representatives of medical specialty societies, their consistent advice has resulted in much higher reimbursements for specialists at the expense of primary care and, more importantly, the American people. Their actions are directly attributable to the explosion of health care costs in America and to the crisis.
