Steven Lash, President and CEO of Satori World Medical, spoke with HealthBlawg last week about Satori's take on medical tourism, including its method of sharing cost savings with consumers who use Satori's services through employer-sponsored health plans. The audio file of my interview with Steven L...

Dan Greden, Head of eHealth Product Management at Aetna, spoke with HealthBlawg last week about Aetna's PHR system, its above-average rate of adoption by members, and the benefits that it provides to members, clinicians and ultimate payors. The audio file of my interview with Dan Greden (about 30 mi...

What’s the difference between sperm samples and discarded toenails? Answer: A landmark case in the UK has ruled the former is still a man’s property. Sperm samples - given by the men after they were warned by doctors that chemotherapy might damage their fertility - were the property of t...

More than 100 councils will today be threatened with legal action over their failure to provide rape crisis centres and domestic violence support services, with a strongly worded warning issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Research reveals that one in four local authorities in Britai...

Apparently the message of Tom Daschle's confirmation hearing today was standard anti-partisan fare: "'We will be guided by evidence and effectiveness, not by ideology,' Mr. Daschle told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions." I have no doubt that this is the correct rhetorica...

Jimmy Carter was one of the 10,000 volunteers who built the Fairway Oaks housing development in 17 days. Now, there's a lawsuit, but it doesn't seem to be based on the shoddy workmanship of amateurs. It seems to be mainly about the site — a garbage dump:One man pulled up his floorboards to find ru...

Harvard Business School Professor Regina Herzlinger has long fought for "consumer-directed health care." She states: "People can choose from 240 models and makes of cars pretty intelligently . . . .Why do we assume they can't do the same when it comes to their health?" A recent Boston Globe series o...

In an interview with Terry Gross, Penn bioethicist Art Caplan claimed the the Bush Administration had severely compromised the nation's capacity to deal with public health and safety threats. I was surprised by the strength of his language, but the more discussions of FDA, EPA, and OSHA I hear about...

Health policymakers are well aware of the pay differential between primary care and specialist physicians. Given this disparity, it's important to recognize how the divergence arose. To the extent that training programs are limited for each specialty, that's a natural barrier to entry that is hard t...

SMH: “Gay couples to face new era of financial discrimination” Adele Horin December 6, 2008 A major achievement of the Rudd Labor Government is the recent passage of historic legislation to remove discrimination against gay and lesbian couples from dozens of laws. As the celebrations die...