Blog and News

The editors asked the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, to describe their health care platforms and their visions for the future of American health care. Their statements follow. 

Read More

Long time readers of this blog will know that I am a strong proponent of direct-pay practitioners, of doctors who “drop out” of the system to establish medical practices in which they are paid directly by their patients. This kind of arrangement is the only way today for physicians and patients to enjoy the classic doctor-patient relationship; you know, the relationship where the patient agrees to confide completely in the physician, and the physician agrees to work solely for the benefit of the patient.

In the modern healthcare system, especially under Obamacare, this classic form of the doctor-patient relationship is not only frowned upon, but is considered unethical. It is unethical because doctors have formally adopted a “new ethics” which obligates them to work for “social justice,” which is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for covert bedside healthcare rationing. The direct-pay model allows physicians to avoid this odious new responsibility.

The entire healthcare system today is disposed to hate the direct-pay model. The reason typically given is that this model of practice will establish unfair “two-tiered” healthcare, the new, undesired tier, of course, being the one in which patients would enjoy the benefits of a professional advocate who is looking out for their individual needs.  

Read More

As we've said all along, competition and patient choice will help bring down the cost of healthcare and improve quality, NOT the new Obama healthcare law with its massive regulations and bureacracies. It's not rocket science folks and has been proven in the other 5/6 of the American economy over the past 236 years. Why should healthcare be any different? LASIK corrective eye surgery, which is not covered by third party payers and their price distortions, is a perfect example of how high technology services have provided great patient satisfaction at prices which continue to fall. Watch this video and learn how simple proposals akin to the D4PC "Prescription" will allow healthcare prices to fall and quality to increase.

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

Read More

The ACA fails to fix the basic problems that were promised if passed- high costs and access to care. It actually exacerbates these problems. There is little disagreement that America’s health care “system” was in need of reform, however, many of the “solutions” embedded in the ACA are concepts that are untested or have failed historically and in recent CMS demonstration projects.

Governor Romney can distance himself from President Obama on healthcare by developing a health system reform platform that relies on trust of the American consumers and their physicians, instead of erecting artificial barriers and obstacles that further erode the physician-patient relationship. A leader like Governor Romney with a lifetime of business experience is poised to collaborate with the working physicians of America to set a more hopeful and constructive healthcare course for the future. 

Read More

The principal factual claims made by the individual mandate's supporters are that the failure to purchase conventional health insurance causes harm to the uninsured person (in the form of worsened health) and to others (in the form of a shifting of the burden of the costs of care).

The evidence supporting each of these claims is weak at best. Peer-reviewed studies from the National Health Insurance Experiment and other data dating back to the 1980s have concluded that there is little or no causal relationship between health insurance and a person's health outcomes.

What about the claim that the costs of caring for the uninsured are significantly shifted onto doctor and hospital bills, thereby raising insurance premiums? George Mason University Prof. Jack Hadley and John Holahan, Teresa Coughlin and Dawn Miller of the Urban Institute published a comprehensive, peer-reviewed study on this in Health Affairs in 2008. It concluded that "Private insurance premiums are at most 1.7 percent higher because of the shifting of the costs of the uninsured to private insurance."

The problems with the U.S. health-care system are mainly the result of a handful of government policies that have prevented market forces from reducing costs and making services more widely available. So what to do? 

Read More

ObamaCare is doomed in any case. ObamaCare is a tax program—throwing more tax dollars at an unreformed health-care system. ObamaCare is a huge new entitlement in a nation laboring under commitments it already can't afford.  

Read More

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

Read More

Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

Read More