health department

Leaders of big health care organizations clearly are interested in influencing public policy and government regulation in ways that favor their organizations, and often indirectly themselves. On the other hand, big health care organizations have traditionally been non-partisan.  While their leaders certainly may have political views, they used to keep them very quiet. In this sense, the

Introduction: Big Organizations, Government Policy and Regulation, and Politics Leaders of big health care organizations clearly are interested in influencing public policy and government regulation in ways that favor their organizations, and often indirectly themselves.  We expect such leaders and organizations to make their policy preferences known.  However, increasingly we have found that

Dr Scott Gottlieb, the first commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appointed by President Trump, has announced his plans to depart.  At the time of his nomination, Dr Gottlieb's many conflicts of interest were well known (see this NY Times article, for example), as were his exceedingly friendly views of the pharmaceutical/ biotechnology industry (see this long ago post, for

Prelude: the Suits in the Elevator Another long night on call of my interniship was over.  Having managed to wolf down breakfast and brush my teeth, disheveled and in unwashed scrubs I stumbled into the elevator on my way to the wards.  In it were some of well-groomed people in nice suits.  They looked at me with wrinkled noses, oozing disdain.  I wondered who they were: pharmaceutical

A major focus of Health Care Renewal has been problems in leadership and governance of health care organizations, which we believe became major causes of health care dysfunction. We have discussed how leadership is often ill-informed.  More and more people leading non-profit, for-profit and government health care organizations have had no training or experience in actually caring for

Just because Washington DC is now crazy town does not mean the revolving door has stopped spinning.  We have been dutifully accumulating cases, so it is time to present our latest update. I will divide this into two sections 1) the incoming revolving door, through which come people from the health care industry to enter US government positions in which they may influence health care

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