Last year the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report entitled “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust.” Clinical guidelines are what doctors use to diagnose and treat medical [...]
Category: Government Agendas
Fiscal cliff notes
Last year, when Congress and the White House failed to make any meaningful budget cuts to get the national debt and deficit under control, it set up “automatic” cuts to take place in 2013. [...]
In appreciation of Senator Arlen Specter
This week, the nation lost a great legislator. And Congress sadly lost a great legal mind and expert on the U.S. Constitution. Not to mention a much-needed, often independent voice. I had the [...]
The law and unintended consequences
In keeping with one of this week’s themes on cost-effective health care…I can’t help but point out recent reports on the Affordable Care Act. Just like anything else, sometimes these government [...]
Weighty matters
Not all obesity and overweight are alike, as my friend and colleague Dean Ornish reminded us in a recent editorial in The New York Times. It still matters what you eat beyond the actual number of [...]
What ever happened to philanthropy?
I’ve written about the constant needs and demands (not always one and the same) for more money to fund medical research and to foster true innovation in our modern medical establishment… [...]
What’s on the menu?
You’ve probably been to a restaurant or two that has started posting “nutritional facts” on their menus. Some restaurants have taken up this trend willingly. Others—in places like New York City, [...]
Physicians behaving “badly”
It has been well established for decades that the most effective way—by far—to convince a patient to stop smoking is to have their physician tell them to stop. So the CDC is up in arms about the [...]
NIH Revisited
After three decades of trying to accomplish things in Washington, I finally found it was much easier to realize a lifelong personal ambition. Which was to return to the area where I grew up. And [...]
The more things change, the more they stay the same
In the September 2012 issue of my Insiders’ Cures newsletter, I present the nutritional recommendations published in the Journal of the American Medical Association 10 years ago. These [...]