A paper has been published here and, while in draft form, discussed at length here, which reanalyzes the features of Zimbabwe’s anthrax epizootic, which began in 1978 and slowly tailed off after 1980. The authors include an MD and geography specialists from the University of Nevada, Reno.  The first author, James M. Wilson, MD, has…

http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/05/12/boston-electronic-medical-records?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170512 By Drs. John Levinson, Bruce H. Price and Vikas Saini It happens every day, in exam rooms across the country, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago: Doctors and nurses turn away from their patients and focus their attention elsewhere — on their computer screens. By the time the doctor can finally turn…

One big contributor to ridiculously high administrative costs of medicine in the US is the federal government. Constantly changing federal rules seem to aim for complexity.  Compliance is nearly impossible for small medical practices, because Medicare changes its rules every few months. Doctors have to play by its rules, but it is very difficult to…

Former NY Times journalist and non-practicing physician Elisabeth Rosenthal’s new book, An American Sickness, lists 10 economic “rules” of US medicine that are guaranteed to make money, but not to improve outcomes: More treatment is always better. Default to the most expensive option. A lifetime of treatment is better than a cure. Amenities and marketing…

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) just issued a report that said the NSA had FISA court permission to spy on less than 100 people (terrorism suspects) in 2016, but it collected information on 150 million phone calls instead. You might ask how NSA whittled down the billions of phone calls made…