By Michael L. Millenson I was reading a medical home advocacy group’s upbeat approach to a recent JAMA study that had found scant benefit in the concept when, suddenly, we tumbled into Alice in Wonderland territory. The press release from the leadership of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) started out reasonably enough. The three-year study […]

By Michael L. Millenson The reason that Republicans shut down the federal government, it turns out, was to “restore patient-centered healthcare in America.” Huh? As the lead author of a policy paper entitled, “Will the Affordable Care Act Move Patient-Centeredness to Center Stage?” I admit to a certain guilty thrill when I read this precise […]

By Michael L. Millenson Forget for a moment the familiar scenes of action and outraged reaction that are playing out in our long-running national debate over how best to provide access to health care for every American. Instead, ask one simple question: what happens in the doctor’s office or hospital once access is achieved. I set […]

By Michael L. Millenson Welcome, students, to our special combined 9th grade math and civics class. Today, we’re going to look at the “Cadillac tax” in the Affordable Care Act. Yes, Mitt, you have a question already? No, no, “Cadillac tax” is just an expression. No one is going to tax your family’s cars, Mitt, […]

By Michael L. Millenson Stealthily, AHRQ has acquired a new head, but the ax still hovers over it. Very quietly, researcher Richard Kronick, PhD was named by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to be the new director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He joins an organization that remains […]

By Michael L. Millenson If you wanted to know what doctors thought about money and medical practice, including plumber envy, you’d read American Medical News(AMN). That’s the biweekly newspaper the American Medical Association just announced it’s shutting down. Unlike JAMA, in which doctors appear as white-coated scientists, AMN focused on practical and political issues, not least of which was […]

By Michael L. Millenson True to his proudly claimed Chicago newspaperman roots, famed movie critic Roger Ebert remained a writer literally up until the moment he died. “A lot of people have asked me how could Roger have [posted] that column one day and then die the next? Well, he didn’t know he was going […]

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON The recent news that thousands of seniors with cancer are being denied treatment with expensive chemotherapy drugs as a result of sequestration-mandated budget cuts raises the question of whether other patients are being equally harmed, but less visibly. A careful study of the impact of past federal budget cutting suggests a troubling […]