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 […]

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute has just appointed four new advisory panels that will help guide hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. Unfortunately, while PCORI released the new advisers’ names, it neglected to tell the public who the advisory panel members really are. Let me explain. PCORI says its […]

By Michael L.  Millenson In case you missed it, the shocking news was that health IT companies that stood to profit from billions of dollars in federal subsidies to potential customers poured in ­– well, actually, poured in not that much money at all when you think about it ­– lobbying for passage of the […]

By Michael L.  Millenson It is as natural for doctors, hospitals, health plans and others to aggressively affirm their “patient-centeredness” as it is for politicians to loudly proclaim their fealty to the hard-working American middle class. Like the politicians, the health care professionals no doubt believe every word they say. The most accurate measure of […]

By Kent Bottles, MD Recent articles highlight challenges with holding providers accountable for the care they deliver. One of the major thrusts of efforts to transform the American healthcare delivery system has been to become more patient-centered and to allow patients to provide feedback that matters. Emblematic of this is the emphasis on patient involvement […]

By Michael L. Millenson The new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has been asking different stakeholders about the most important issues to address with the hundreds of millions of dollars the quasi-governmental group will shortly be doling out in grants. Not surprisingly, the stakeholders have been more than happy to respond. PCORI’s most recent day […]

By Michael L. Millenson With some pundits predicting that President Obama’s re-election could be sabotaged by a slim level of white voter support, I decided to dig through the small print on Obamacare to see how this right-wing lightning rod actually affects my fellow Caucasians. It turns out that the high-profile legislative highlight of Obama’s […]

By Michael Millenson The flap greeting Mitt Romney’s cheerful admission that as president he’d defund Big Bird’s nesting place on public television could turn out to be good news for a federal agency promoting safe medical care that faces a similar extinction threat. But we won’t know till after the election whether the little-known agency […]