health department

I am old enough to remember having measles as a child, a thoroughly unpleasant experience.  Some children had much unhappier results of measles than I did.  So as a parent, I was happy to see that a reasonably effective measles vaccine had practically eliminated the disease from the US and most developed countries. However, we currently are in the midst of a measles outbreak in the US.  The

There is now never a dull moment at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).  Its current director, Seema Verma, has developed a more efficient way to combine conflicts of interest with self-interest, bad management, and possibly worse. Outsourcing CMS Communications to Private Public Relations Firms In summary,

In the early 21st century, the debate about health care reform in the US ramped up.  The result ultimately was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, ACA, "Obamacare"), which arguably improved access to health care, made some reforms in the regulation of health care insurance, but did not affect the fundamental reliance of the US on employer-paid, for-profit health care insurance

Introduction: Logical Fallacies and Unsubstantiated Claims in Defense of Conflicts of Interest in Health Care We have long been concerned about deceptive marketing to sell health care products, and deceptive public relations to push policy positions favorable to health care organizations' leaders.  Deceptive marketing and public relations may morph into stealth marketing and stealth advocacy,

As an advocate for evidence-based medicine, I am used to disagreeing with officials at US government health agencies on the finer points of evidence and its interpretation.  However, it's 2018, and things are very different.  Now the current regime, and those who back it, have produced a rising tide of outright nonsensical assertions about medicine and health care used seemingly in service of 

Many issues brought up at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, were relevant to the problems of conflicts of interest, crime and corruption in health care which we often discuss on Health Care Renewal, and hence bear repeating here. The discussion certainly got at the complexity of fighting corruption, seemingly one of many necessities that has

Health Care Corporations Promote Their Social Responsibility The US health care system's extreme dsyfnctionality is now a cliche.  So it's no wonder that everyone seems to want to make things better.  Big health care corporations in particular tout their socially responsible ideas for health care reform. For example, PhRMA, the trade organization for drug and biotechnology firms, describes its

Introduction: Disinformation and Stealth Marketing Campaigns Back in the distant past the US government made some attempt to hold big health care corporations to account for misleading marketing practices.  We learned a lot about these practices from documents revealed in the resulting litigation, and in particular, about stealthy, deceptive systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy

Here we go again.  As we  We have frequently discussed how health care leadership is often ill-informed ( look here).  More and more people leading non-profit, for-profit and government health care organizations have had no training or experience in actually caring for patients, or in biomedical, clinical or public health research.  Obviously health care and health policy decisions made by

"Don't worry, things could be worse.  And sure enough, things got worse." Disinformation in Medicine and Health Care Stealthy, deceptive systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy campaigns on behalf of big health care organizations, often pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, have long been a subject of Health Care Renewal.  A relatively recently revealed

Hold on to your hat: it all comes together now. Looking at events in our nation's capital, in a strange fever dream, The Big Bang Theory just came to me. No, call it the Big Fecal-Bang Theory, as I read about how our national leadership proceeds from one inanity to the next. But when it comes to health care, and wiping out the safety net using false premises, inanity kills. So this is worth

It has been the season for health care reform in the US since at least the Nixon administration.  We have endlessly discussed the unholy triad of health care dysfunction: rising costs, declining access, and stagnant quality. These days, with all the furor over whether Obamacare should be repealed and replaced, let alone, or improved, it is still the season for health care reform.  Last week an