All right, let’s finish the dumb and dumber list we started last time. Drum roll, please …

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Psychologist Drew Westen, PhD, Professor at Emory University, wrote an excellent extended rant for the Huffington Post on where Obama is going wrong on key issues. He specifically addresses healthcare, and the negative effect Obama’s inability to both enunciate and enforce standards for reform have had. Well worth your time!

Read it here.

We all know there are legitimate reasons to oppose current healthcare reform efforts in Washington, D.C. Then there are those who are so far out in right field you wonder how they manage to dress themselves. As John Wooden said to his basketball players, “Gentlemen, today we’re going to learn to put on our shoes and socks.” Today’s post is dedicated to them, the logic-challenged Americans. Here’s to you, Tea Partiers, Palinophiles, Faux News proponents, and other fascinating specimens. It’s your time to shine.

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We’ve been bombarded with cost containment messages this year that either make us cheer (yay! Lower premiums! Less profit!) or fear (What? Does that mean they’re going to withhold my care?) One physician leader wants to address the conundrum head-on, with a win-win proposal. Meet A. Mark Fendrick, MD, who invented a new concept a decade ago that is now under the bright spotlight of the healthcare reform debate. He calls it Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID), which tends to cause knee-jerk reactions related to rationing and 1990’s capitation. But this is about giving effective treatment, not taking it away.

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Who knew 21^st century house calls could be so hip, so high-tech and so emergency-room oriented? Hospitalization is so last century. ER physician C. Gresham Bayne, MD, is a pioneer in keeping severely ill Medicare patients at home. He’s wringing the expense, waste, discomfort, indignity, and stress out of US emergency care the old fashioned way: making house calls. The founder and president of Call Doctor Medical Group seeks to provide better care for the elderly and save 10 times the money. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?

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