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Eleven Republican doctors are running for the Senate, hoping that voters will see their medical expertise as an asset amid the administration’s botched rollout of ObamaCare. “Doctors are in a very unique position to look at the financing of healthcare,” Rep. Paul Broun, a family physician running for the GOP nomination for Georgia’s open Senate seat, told The Hill. “We go into medicine for one reason, and one reason only: Because we care about people, we want the people who we serve to have a productive, happy, healthy life,” he added. “That’s the kind of policymaker we should have in...

The Jewish General Hospital’s crest — visible throughout the hospital — is a menorah. Its previous emblem, still visible on thousands of uniforms and lab coats, features the Jewish Star of David.Photograph by Marie-France Coallier, The Gazette MONTREAL — Calling Quebec's proposed secularism charter "patently discriminatory," the Jewish General Hospital has vowed to defy any provisions that would prohibit its doctors and other employees from wearing the kippah and other religious symbols on the job. This is the second time that the Jewish General has taken a public position against the charter since it was unveiled in September. Bill 60...

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If you think Obamacare is bad for consumers and patients think about this: how would you like to spend between twelve and sixteen years of your life in grueling and expensive academic training, only to have politicians and bureaucrats dictating to you years later how you will practice your craft and how much money you’ll be allowed to earn? Let’s be clear about medical doctors. Any individual who can genuinely earn the title “M.D.” is worthy of significant respect, and one would hope that an entire association of M.D.’s would be equally as worthy. Unfortunately the American Medical Association –...

Last week we ran a story analyzing an op-ed piece that one-time Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which the former Governor of Vermont conceded that the Independent Payment Advisory Board was “essentially a health-care rationing body.” ObamaCare has been controversial from long before it passed by the narrowest of margins and probably no facet has drawn more critics that the IPAB. National Right to Life laid out the rationing problems that are part and parcel of the IPAB from the very beginning (www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/ObamaHCRationingBasicDOCUMENTATION.pdf). Thus it was helpful that Dean admitted there really was...

Three times more doctors are refusing Medicare patients than three years ago, many citing Medicare's increasing rules and lowered payment rates. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the program, even doctors who still see some Medicare patients are limiting the number of Medicare patients they will treat, reports The Wall Street Journal. … The numbers of doctors refusing both Medicare and Medicaid payments won’t completely undermine Obamacare, health experts say, but some patients may have problems finding doctors who will accept their new coverage under the healthcare reform law. …

Thirty-two-year old family physician Doug Nunamaker of Wichita, Kan., said after five years of dealing with the red tape of health insurance companies and the high overhead for the staff he hired just to deal with paperwork, he switched to a system of charging his patients a monthly fee plus the price of an office visit or test, CNN/Money reported. For example, under Nunamaker's membership plan -- also known as "concierge" medicine or "direct primary care" practices -- each patient pays a flat monthly fee to have unlimited access to the doctors and any medical service they can provide in...

N Engl J Med 2013; 368:2251-2253June 13, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1302795 Shortly after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, two of us received letters from our county sheriff in North Carolina asking whether one of our patients had medical or physical conditions that would preclude issuance of a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Uncomfortable with our limited knowledge about such permits and our expected role, and fearing that our participation could affect our relationships with patients, we began exploring the ethical, legal, and policy considerations regarding physician involvement in this process. Although the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the Second Amendment...

WASHINGTON — THURSDAY, March 21, 2013 (MedPage Today) — Most physicians have a pessimistic outlook on the future of medicine, citing eroding autonomy and falling income, a survey of more than 600 doctors found. Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years, a survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found. That perception is uniform across age, gender, and specialty, it said. Another 55 percent of surveyed doctors believe others will scale back hours because of the way medicine is changing, but...

Last week, the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform released its recommendations, calling for the elimination of fee-for-service healthcare within the next 5 years. This organization, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is populated by physicians from academia, the insurance industry and from the public policy world. Having former GOP Senate Majority leader and cardiac surgeon Bill Frist serving as honorary chairman gives the imprimatur of bipartisanship and legitimacy. However, Dr. Frist, a former academic himself, has long favored a government supervised healthcare system, and is therefore less than objective in this regard. The Commission was formed to assess...

ObamaCare is pushing physicians into becoming hospital employees. The results aren't encouraging. The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls. The result? It is estimated that by next year, about 50% of U.S. doctors will be working for a hospital or hospital-owned health system. Once they work for hospitals, physicians change their behavior in two principal ways. Often they see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures.

Do you have a gun in your home? For some, that's a loaded question - particularly when asked by a doctor. A debate is simmering over when and whether physicians should be allowed to talk to their patients about firearms. Doctor groups say physicians are obligated to warn their patients about guns along with other health risks, such as riding in a car without wearing a seat belt. However, gun rights advocates balk at what they see as a needless invasion of privacy and blatant attempt at gun control advocacy. State and federal lawmakers are weighing in. President Barack Obama's...

Since retiring and leaving Law Enforcement, I have been active in Risk Management consulting, a field that has grown rapidly throughout every industry over the past 20 years. Some of the companies I have consulted to for risk management include IBM, Gates Lear jet, National Semiconductor, and Pinkerton International Protection Services.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was being monitored closely at a New York hospital Monday night, although doctors said she was making “excellent progress” toward “a full recovery” from a blood clot inside her skull. Doctors discovered the clot Sunday during a routine MRI as part of a follow-up exam to a concussion Mrs. Clinton sustained in mid-December after dehydration from an acute stomach virus caused her to faint and hit her head. “The scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated

Democrats are exulting in their narrow victory on Nov 6, saying that ObamaCare is “now a certainty,” and the “best is yet to come” as they implement their glorious promises of healthcare for all. The fact is, however, that key parts of the Act are not in effect yet and may be blocked at the state level.

Just in case the unaffordable price tag and rising costs don't quite do the trick, America's spiraling dearth of doctors will contribute heavily to the collapse of our re-engineered health care system, according to a new study:   The United States will require at least 52,000 more family doctors in the year 2025 to keep up with the growing and increasingly older U.S. population, a new study found. The predictions also reflect the passage of the Affordable Care Act -- a change that will expand health insurance coverage to an additional 38 million Americans. "The health care consumer that values...

Physicians Who Use Marijuana are 'Unsafe to Practice' MONTREAL, Canada — Physicians who legally use medical marijuana to treat their own debilitating conditions such as chronic pain or nausea are considered unsafe to practice medicine in the state of Colorado until such time that they no longer need the treatment, according to a policy from the Colorado Physician Health Program. "We took a conservative stance," Doris Gundersen, MD, Medical Director of the Colorado Physician Health Program, told Medscape Medical News after her presentation here at the International Conference on Physician Health (ICPH). "We don't want to deny them treatment...but until they no...

A new survey shows Mitt Romney with a commanding lead over President Barack Obama among doctors, with Obamacare helping to sway their votes. If the election were held today, 55 percent of physicians reported they would vote for Romney while just 36 percent support Obama, according to a survey released by Jackson & Coker, a division of Jackson Healthcare, the third largest health care staffing company in the United States Fifteen percent of respondents said they were switching their vote from Obama in 2008 to Romney in 2012. The top reasons cited for this change was the Affordable Care Act...

There are 600,000 physicians in America who care for the 48 million seniors on Medicare. Of the $716 billion that the Affordable Care Act cuts from the program over the next ten years, the largest chunk—$415 billion—comes from slashing Medicare’s reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes. This significant reduction in fees is driving many doctors to stop accepting new Medicare patients, making it harder for seniors to gain access to needed care. Here are a few of their stories. Paul Wertsch is a primary physician in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1977, he and his two partners invested $500,000 of...

Dear Friend, In this video commentary, I discuss how Obamacare is triggering a national doctor shortage, decreasing the quality of care for us all. Tune in!