US President Joe Biden and his team are traveling the country spouting the success of his economic policies. The package is called “Bidenomics.” It’s best understood as a contrast (which I’ll get to shortly) to traditional GOP economic policy recommendations. The latter argues for lower taxes, less government regulation, and minimizing social welfare spending. The fear underlying GOP dismissal of Bidenomics is that we will become a “socialist” nation. Think of Scandinavian nations with high taxes and high social spending. (The fact that these nations do not engage in socialism – a system where the government owns the means of production, distribution, and exchange – is beside the point. But discussing that would be a digression here.) The GOP policy prescription is based on core assumptions such as: The private sector can spend money more efficiently than the government. Low taxes on corporations…
Healthcare Needs a “Me Too” Movement
Some things should never happen in healthcare, like operating on the wrong place or providing the wrong medication or dosage. But such things happen, sadly. In a study of one insurer’s malpractice claims stemming from 68 wrong-site surgery claims between 2013-2020, 46% of patients required a second surgery, 10% experienced mobility dysfunction, and 9% had a worsened injury. Even worse, 15% died or totally lost function, about equally split. These mistakes should never have occurred. Since 2004, The Joint Commission (which accredits US healthcare organizations) has mandated a Universal Protocol for surgery. The protocol requires a pre-incision verification process, the surgeon marking the incision site on the body, and a surgical team time-out immediately before the incision so that any team member can stop the surgery. Yet between 2018 and 2022, The Joint Commission received 525 reports of wrong surgery. It’s a likely…