Ep. 105 Privatizing the NHS: Who Profits?
Our guest is Dr. Bob Gill, producer of the documentary The Great NHS Heist. We discuss what life in the NHS is like, how it differs from practice in the United States, and most importantly, Dr. Gill’s fears of what is undermining the mission of the NHS – a hostile takeover by American corporate interests.
GUEST:
Dr. Bob Gill: Twitter
LINKS:
WATCH ON Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegreatnhsheist
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Ep. 104 Physician-Assisted Suicide: Why and Why Not
Many physicians feel ambivalent about assisted suicide and neither endorse the practice nor outright condemn it. As a result, they also avoid discussing the topic altogether. Our guest is Dr. Adam Cifu, who kindly agreed to engage in a conversation on this difficult question.
GUEST:
Adam Cifu, MD: University of Chicago website and Twitter
Books by Adam Cifu: Ending Medical Reversal and Symptom to Diagnosis
LINKS:
FREE e-Book: “A Deadly Choice for the Medical Profession“
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Ep. 103 Ok, dinosaur: Skeptical Scalpel on the State of Surgical Education
Our guest is the highly successful and widely respected blogger who writes anonymously under the pen name “Skeptical Scalpel.” He is a former Chairman of Surgery at an academic institution and we conversed about the state of surgical education and its present-day challenges.
GUEST:
Twitter, blog, and author page at Physician’s Weekly
LINKS:
- Mass. General Hospital on the Hot Seat
- State rules surgeon whereabouts must be documented
- What were attrition rates in surgical residency programs 25 years ago?
- Problems with surgical residents and continuity of care
- Board passage rates and residency program quality
- Three more papers document the decline of resident education
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Ep. 102 Curriculum Subverted: An Academic Leader Pushes Back Against ‘Woke’ Medical Education
Should the medical school curriculum include health inequity, climate change, and gun control? Our guest is Professor Stanley Goldfarb, author of a recent and controversial op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the politicization of medical education.
GUEST:
Stanley Goldfarb, MD: Professional website
LINKS:
“Take Two Aspirins and Call Me by My Pronouns” (WSJ, Sep 12, 2019)
“An Open Letter to Our Former Dean, Stanley Goldfarb” (Medscape, Sep 20, 2019)
“Social Justice and Educating Our Physicians” (WSJ, Editorial Board, Sep 19, 2019)
RELATED EPISODES:
Ep. 43 Doctors and Guns: Where Is the Lane? (with guest Pradheep Shanker, MD)
Ep. 75 Bridging Health and Community (with guest Pritpal Tamber, MBChB)
Ep. 58 The Rise and Fall of the American Medical School (with guest Milton Packer, MD)
Ep. 46 Reforming Medical Education: Beyond the Usual Platitudes (with guest Adam Cifu, MD)
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Ep. 101 A Tougher Pill to Swallow: Roundtable on Generic Drugs
Swapnil Hiremath, MD John Tucker, PhD
As a follow-up to our podcast on the Ranbaxy Scandal, we are joined by medicinal chemist John Tucker, PhD and hypertension specialist Swapnil Hiremath, MD. Our distinguished guests share with us their perspectives and impressions on the unsettling question of generic drugs.
GUESTS:
John Tucker, PhD: Twitter
Swapnil Hiremath, MD: Twitter and Professional website
RELATED EPISODE:
Ep. 100 Can We Trust Generic Drugs? The Ranbaxy Whistleblower Narrates the Pharma Scandal of the Century (with guest Dinesh Thakur)
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Ep. 100 Can We Trust Generic Drugs? The Ranbaxy Whistleblower Narrates the Pharma Scandal of the Century
Dinesh Thakur
Generic drugs represent 90% of the pharmaceutical market. Their use has been encouraged through decades of favorable legislation and subsidies, with authorities claiming they are as safe and effective as brand name drugs. Yet generic preparations tainted with impurities are being reported with increasing frequency. What should doctors and the public know about generic drug manufacture? Our guest is the chemist who was at the center of the most important scandal to rock the global pharmaceutical industry in decades.
GUEST:
Dinesh Thakur Twitter and Website
LINKS:
Bottles of Lies by Katherine Eban
RELATED EPISODES:
Ep. 15 Lethal Regulation: The 1962 FDA Amendments (with guest Mary Ruwart)
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Ep. 99 Health Policy Should Focus on Choice
David Balat
A health policy of choice—not of constraints—is what we need, says our guest David Balat. He is currently the Director of the Right on Healthcare initiative with Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has a broad base of experience throughout the healthcare spectrum with special expertise in healthcare finance. He is a former Congressional candidate in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District and a seasoned hospital executive with more than 20 years of healthcare industry leadership and executive management experience.
David is focused on education and advocacy in an effort to simplify coverage that is too expensive, complicated, and untrustworthy. He is an ardent advocate of Physicians and believes the restoration of the Physician/Patient relationship is critical to fixing our dysfunctional system. He often volunteers of his time to help families navigate their bills and how to understand their benefits.
GUEST:
David Balat: Twitter and Webpage at the Texas Public Policy Foundation
LINKS:
“Uninsured by Choice or by Circumstances?” (from The Hill, September 2019)
RELATED EPISODE:
Ep. 64 Cost Sharing: Paying for Health Care in an Ethical and Sustainable Way (with guest Dale Bellis)
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Ep. 98 Psychiatry v. Antipsychiatry
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA
As a medical discipline, psychiatry has often been the target of severe criticism, particularly in the last 50 to 60 years. Is the criticism valid or not? What is the outlook for the science of mental illness and the practice of psychiatry? Our guest today defends his chosen medical specialty.
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA, is a Staff Psychiatrist at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and an Adjunct Professor at the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies. His clinical interests have been in acute care, geriatric psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, and addiction psychiatry. He currently practices addiction psychiatry, providing psychiatric consultation on patient care to the professional staff, and lectures on the neurobiology, epidemiology, and the clinical aspects of addiction psychiatry.
Dr. Dawson completed his training in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin where he was a research fellow. Scholarly interests include biological psychiatry, consciousness studies, and the medical, philosophical, and political aspects of psychiatry. In his spare time, he writes a blog about some of these topics called Real Psychiatry.
GUEST:
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA: Twitter and website “Real Psychiatry”
LINKS:
Selected blog posts by Dr. Dawson:
RELATED EPISODE:
Ep. 71 Psychiatry: Past, Present, and Future (with guest Paul McHugh, MD)
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Ep. 97 Evidence-Based Economics: What the Doctor Ordered?
Peter G. Klein, PhD
Will the randomized control trial bring more clarity and certainty to economic science? Is “evidence-based economics” something to be hailed as a welcome innovation or should it be appraised with a more sober attitude? To examine this topic and discuss the relative place of randomized trials in economics and medicine we have as our guest Peter G. Klein, W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Professor Klein is also the Carl Menger Research Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He obtained his PhD in Economics from the University of California Berkeley, and his BA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
His field of interest is in the area of the economics of entrepreneurship and business organization. He taught previously at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Georgia, the Copenhagen Business School, and the University of Missouri, and served as a Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author of 5 books and numerous peer-reviewed articles.
GUEST:
Peter G. Klein: Twitter and academic web page
LINKS:
Klein, P. “New Nobel Winners Are Latest Bad Science for Economic Theory” (Article on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website).
RELATED EPISODE:
Ep. 30 Beyond EBM: Case-Based Reasoning and the Integration of Clinical Knowledge (with guest Mark Tonelli, MD)
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Ep. 96 Surprise Billing: What the Policy Wonks Don’t Get
Amy Mecozzi Cho, MD
Do hospital-based physicians benefit from being out-of-network? Are policy wonks who attack “surprise billing” fully aware of the relevant factors? In this second episode on this topic, Dr. Koka leads a conversation with our guest, Dr. Amy Cho, an emergency physician from Minnesota.
Dr. Cho graduated from the University of Michigan with a joint MD/MBA and completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago. Prior to medical school, she worked as a management consultant with Bain & Co. and as a product manager with Convio, a venture-funded software company.
GUEST:
Amy Mecozzi Cho, MD: Twitter
LINKS:
High Yield Script (website)
RELATED EPISODE:
Ep. 94. The Trojan Horse of Surprise Billing Legislation (with guest Daniel E. Choi, MD)
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