“Silence gives consent,” according to St. Thomas More. That deafening silence was evident on CBS Sunday Morning last month during an interview with Barbara Coombs Lee, a leading advocate for physician-assisted suicide and president of Compassion and Choices. When did she…
What has happened to our health care system? Physicians are now called “providers” and patients are “consumers.” Primary care doctors are buried with insurance paper work, checking the appropriate boxes, and using the right billing codes. Add to that, they…
According to a recent AARP report, 40 million Americans are family caregivers. They collectively provide 37 billion hours of unpaid caregiving each year, estimated to be valued at a whopping $470 billion. The average American caregiver is 49 years old,…
In 2010, people 65 and older accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population. However, demographics are changing quickly. Those 85 and above are projected to number 72 million in 2030, constituting 20 percent of all Americans. The elderly’s demands…
Our country just experienced a kumbaya week with Pope Francis' visit to the U.S. Some of his most powerful words dealt with the respect for the sanctity of life. I argue that our legislators and by extension, our public health…
In the next decade, our nation will be defined by how we grapple with escalating health care costs. Today, health care comprises 18 percent of GDP in the U.S. If the current trajectory continues, health care costs are on a…
According to Dr. Michael H. Sacks, professor of psychiatry at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, “when patients kill themselves, it is a very painful and humbling experience for psychiatrists. A patient’s suicide punctures our therapeutic omnipotence and reminds us that…
Approximately five million people in the U.S. have some degree of dementia, a number assured to increase with the aging population. Dementia is sometimes mistakenly considered to be one disease, but it includes Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia,…
Though every state in this nation struggles with escalating and unmanageable healthcare costs, only Oregon has established a rationing policy for the care needs of those on Medicaid. Oregon’s overt rationing plan has suffered the bumps and bruises of being…
It has been a year since waiting lists at VA hospitals made international headlines, as our American veterans struggled to access timely health care. In the months since, The Associated Press has found that the number of medical appointments delayed…