Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ripped from the public health headlines...

I know everyone is doing a lot of reading for pleasure in their copious free time, but I understand this article...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande

... is the latest touchstone for the debate in Washington over health-care reform. Everyone, including our fair senator, Max Baucus of Baucus White Paper fame, is reading it.

The article compares the medical cultures of a town in Texas, which has the "most expensive health care in the world" with that of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The two places have something like a $11,000-per-citizen swing in annual medical spending.

The author, Atul Gawande, is a practicing surgeon and public health scholar, who writes for the New Yorker on a regular basis. He has also written a couple of books about his training and surgery as a learned trade. "Complications" was pretty good, and I think "Better" just came out this year.

Hope you are all well.

mike

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