On July 31, President Trump sent letters to some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world (AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi) asking them to fundamentally change drug pricing in the US. What was…
President Donald Trump’s administrations have been notorious for an array of “alternative facts” — ranging from the relatively minor (the size of inaugural crowds) to threats to U.S. democracy, such as who really won the 2020 election. And over the past six months, the stakes have been life or death: Trump’s health officials have been…
Jacob Sweidan has seen his patients through the federal immigration raids of the 1990s, a sitting governor’s call to abolish birthright citizenship, and the highly publicized workplace crackdowns and family separation policies of President Donald Trump’s first term. But in his 40 years as a pediatrician in Southern California serving those too poor to afford…
Jacob Sweidan ha visto a sus pacientes superar las redadas federales de inmigración de la década de 1990, el pedido de un gobernador para abolir la ciudadanía por nacimiento y las muy publicitadas medidas represivas en el lugar de trabajo y las políticas de separación familiar del primer mandato del presidente Donald Trump. Pero en…
Neil Jennings Vince Kuraitis By NEIL JENNINGS & VINCE KURAITIS This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Platforming Healthcare — The Long View In previous posts in this series, we have covered the definitions of Unified Digital Health platforms and whether “EHRs can become UDHPs.” In this follow-on post, we’ll talk through the requirements for…
By MATTHEW HOLT To join in the fun I am having with Blue Shield of California & Brown & Toland Physicians IPA being unable to tell me why I have a $34.94 bill for lab work (see image) that should either be covered as preventable under the ACA, or have co-pay of $50 (see image…
In southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, clouds billow above the towering mountains of the Sangre de Cristo range. A chorus of blackbirds whistle as they flit among the reeds of a wildlife refuge. Big, circular fields of crops, interspersed with native shrubs, give it a feel of bucolic quiet. But amid the stark beauty in…
When a New York couple purchased a health insurance plan from a telemarketer, they thought it covered everything they wanted: doctor visits, tests, and medicine. But then came the unexpected bills for thousands of dollars, forcing them to skip crucial medical care. In their series “Health Care Hustlers,” Bloomberg reporters Zachary Mider and Zeke Faux…
Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters discusses rising Workers Comp cost in California: Of particular interest is the growing prevalence of unlisted codes in physical medicine (PM). Last year saw a huge jump in PM services coded as 97799 – “unlisted physical medicine”. Note that jump happened while the use of normal/traditional/common PM codes for…
By KIM BELLARD I have to admit, I’ve steered away from writing about AI lately. There’s just so much going on, so fast, that I can’t keep up. Don’t ask me how GPT-5 differs from GPT-4, or what Gemini does versus Genie 3. I know Microsoft really, really wants me to use Copilot, but so…