A quick announcement of two talks I’m doing in the near future, both on health care. The first is called “Patient, Defend Thyself: Insurance Denials and the Resort to Force,” at the annual meeting of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), Saturday, Oct. 11 at Swarthmore College. The second is a brief, untitled contribution to an Ethics Roundtable on access to health care, co-sponsored by the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and Felician University, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1-2 pm on Zoom. The PJSA talk is on-ground and only open to registered conference attendees; the APPE/Felician talk is fully online and open to the public. Continue reading
Category Archives: Health Care Series
Karma Comes for Mikie Sherrill
A controversy has recently broken out in the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. Mikie Sherrill, who has long touted her experience as a helicopter pilot for the Navy, is now facing the somewhat exaggerated charge that she “cheated her way” through the Naval Academy (to quote hearsay from the Internet).
The backstory is this: Nicholas DeGregorio, a supporter of Sherrill’s opponent in the race, made a records request re Sherrill, including her Naval Academy record, to the National Personnel Center of the National Archives. Continue reading
Memo to Joe
Imagine dropping Joe Biden right now in the middle of Gaza, and telling him to find his way to the nearest cancer treatment center. It’d be a long, arduous, circuitous trip, because there isn’t one. Thousands of people don’t have to imagine that. They’ve lived it for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency, and have lived a version of it ever since the Israelis imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007, with Joe Biden’s eager acquiescence. In other words, they’ve lived, at Joe’s behest, the Hell that it would universally be thought tasteless to wish on him.
Continue readingWe Won’t Stop
The New York Times has yet another article on the Trump Administration’s attacks on higher education. As a former academic, I feel bad for higher education, but as an activist right now, I feel fine. Here’s my unapologetic comment in the comments section of the article:
When campus activists called for divestment, we were mocked. Now, as Defense Dept contracts are being canceled at those very universities, invoking our activism as a pretext, it’s our turn to mock. Don’t expect sympathy. It’s not forthcoming. You wanted us in jail. We want you broke. May the antagonist with the greatest moral endurance win.
My comment elicited a rejoinder from someone named Al Orin from New York City: Continue reading
The Oracle Speaks
OK, so let’s get this straight. TikTok had to be sold because given its Chinese ownership, it was a danger to our privacy, and on top of that, a danger to national security. But no worries, because according to business guru and data analyst Donald Trump, all-American Oracle had the technical capacity to “handle” the TikTok acquisition and handle TikTok itself. Nothing that a $100 billion Trump-inspired AI initiative couldn’t solve.
Meanwhile, back in 2022, Oracle acquired Cerner, the healthcare data company. It has now managed, as of just a few weeks ago, to get precisely its Cerner data hacked. So while Oracle could, at least in Donald Trump’s mind, handle TikTok, it couldn’t, in fact, manage to handle Cerner.
Continue readingProvider, Heal Thyself
Every now and then, in debates about the political economy of health care, you’ll run into the physician who declares that he’s had it with being called a “provider,” and won’t put up with it a minute longer. He went to med school, he got an MD, he walked uphill-barefoot-in-the-snow-both-ways, from anatomy and physiology to endocrinology and immunology–and back. He did an internship. He did his residency. He spent his nights on call, sleeping in the hospital. He’s a physician, goddammit, not a “provider,” and he refuses to be called by the latter name. That’s the problem with health care today, by gum. The insurers and administrators have taken over, using new-fangled “provider” jargon, and lost touch with the good old days, when MDs were MDs, and reimbursement was fee for service. Continue reading
No More Tears
The Selena Gomez controversy may not be your idea of a top story right now, but I think it has a certain interest to it. As you may know, Gomez took to social media to post a video of herself sobbing about the recent ICE deportations. No sooner did she do so, but she was assailed for it. She tried to explain herself, only to invite further derision, then ended up deleting both the original post and one of her later explanations.
Of particular interest to me is this riposte to Gomez from Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, and now the White House “border czar.”
We’ve got a quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl coming across an open border. Where’s the tears for them?
The border isn’t “open,” and the “quarter of a million” figure is phony. But I have a pretty direct answer to Homan’s question, and have special standing to answer it: If you want tears, look elsewhere. Continue reading
Engels on Social Murder
“Social murder” is a form of homicide that takes place through relatively invisible social processes involving collective rather than individual responsibility. The concept is controversial because it attributes murder to “society” while relying on an unconventional conception of murder: society intends murder, and society kills, where society is identified with a ruling class that controls the political system. What’s controversial here is that social murder kills mostly by omission rather than commission, and is perpetrated by a class rather than by individuals. Both assumptions flout the conventional understanding of the intentionality and causality of murder. Continue reading
The Rime of the Denial Manager
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1834)
About two weeks ago, I wrote a long post here on the killing of UnitedHealthCare (UHC) CEO Brian Thompson. Here’s a follow up. Continue reading
The Evil Demon in the OR
EVS Journal 8: More Scenes from Life on Call in the OR
Up to this point, what I have accepted as very true I have derived either from the senses or through the senses. However, sometimes I have discovered that these are mistaken, and it is prudent never to place one’s entire trust in things which have deceived us even once.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation 1
I’m on call in the OR for New Year’s Day, 8 am to midnight–an irritation after a long sleep-deprived week of work, including all of New Year’s Eve spent in the OR. I wake up on New Year’s Day, and decide, on a mere hunch or whim, to drive to the hospital mid-morning, pre-empting the phone call that calls me in to the hospital, operating instead (so to speak) on the premonition that if I go to the OR unbidden, there’ll inevitably be a case waiting for me to do, which I’ll then be in a position to “head off at the pass,” whatever that’s supposed to mean in this non-cowboy context. Continue reading
