Notes on the Social History of American Medicine, Self Reliance and Health Care, Today

…a bit on the history of health care in the United States. The Social Transformation of American Medicine, by Paul Starr, was first published in 1982. The author, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, gives a fascinating, still-relevant account…

Posted in Books, Economics, Medical Education, Medical History, ReviewsTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment on Notes on the Social History of American Medicine, Self Reliance and Health Care, Today

Word of the Week: floccinaucinihilipilificationism

ML learned a new word upon reading the newspaper: floccinaucinihilipilificationism. According to the New York Times now, Moynihan prided himself on coining the 32-letter mouthful, by which he meant “the futility of making estimates on the accuracy of public data.”

She’s not exactly sure how the term, said to be the longest non-technical word in the English language, might be used in medical communication, but it seems that it might be relevant to estimating health care costs, and – possibly by extrapolation – to understanding the hidden ambiguousness of inferences drawn from vast amounts of seemingly hard data.

Posted in Communication, language, StatisticsTagged , , , , , 1 Comment on Word of the Week: floccinaucinihilipilificationism

It’s Not About the Money

If physicians’ potential profit motives cloud the mammography debate, as the authors contend, that doesn’t mean that mammography is ineffective. Rather it signifies that doctors and scientists should analyze data and make clinical decisions in the absence of financial or other conflicts of interest.

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, health care costs, health care delivery, Medical Ethics, Oncology (cancer), PolicyTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on It’s Not About the Money
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