Tags: policy

Blog Posts (12)

Mar 02, 2012

Meet Our New Associate Editor, Kayhan Parsi, JD PhD

AJOB is proud to have Kayhan Parsi as our new Associate Editor.  Kayhan has worked with AJOB closely for the last three years serving as its Book Review Editor.…

Oct 10, 2011

Saving the USPS by Cutting Healthcare Costs?

What does the postal service have to do with healthcare? Sure, the USPS delivers medical supplies to individuals and organizations. But that is not the connection that the nation’s postmaster general is making between healthcare and the viability of the postal service.…

Apr 07, 2011

Women's Health Shouldn't Be Partisan--But It Is!

As Donna Shalala writes on the Huffington Post today: “health of our women should not be a partisan preference”, but as we all know the politics of women’s health continues to plague access to reproductive health services, equitable access to health services generally, and more broadly remind us that there is still a critical gap between males and females in regard to health in our country.…

Jun 24, 2010

NY State to Presume Consent For Organs?

NY State will presume consent for organ donation, that is, if Assemblyman Richard Brodsky gets his way. Acknowledging that the demand for transplantable organs vastly outstrips supply and the fact that presumed consent works in other European nations, Brodsky has proposed that the default would be that all New Yorkers would donate their organs upon their death unless they were to check a box “opting out” on their driver’s license registration form.…

Apr 29, 2010

Will Taking the Happy Out of the Happy Meal Keep Kids from Getting Fat?

Well, at least one California county is trying. You have to give them that. In an effort to curb childhood obesity, Santa Clara county, California has banned toys from meals with over 485 calories, effectively fast food.…

Jul 01, 2009

Common Ground on Abortion? Not Likely.

President Obama isn’t really asking for much. Really it’s quite simple: both sides of the issue, conservatives and liberals, must give up a little bit to reach a “common ground” on a perennial issue to lay this “culture war” on abortion aside.…

Jun 17, 2009

Your Out! Auf Wiedersehen to the Doctor's White Coat

They never were fashion-forward, but the AMA had a much better reason to vote out the traditional doctor’s white coat this week.…

Apr 20, 2009

Powers' Chicken and The Egg Problem

Madison Powers’ eloquent essay from CQPolitics.com last Friday analyzes Obama’s two-fold problem passing healthcare reform.

What Powers calls “decoupling” the two key arguments about cost containment and expanding access to healthcare, I call his “chicken and the egg problem”.…

Feb 11, 2009

Can You Hear Van Halen Playing In The Background?

A new report issued by the Center for Genetics and Society has been released titled, “Responsible Federal Oversight of New Human Biotechnologies: Opportunities for the New Administration”.…

Feb 09, 2009

Nanotech Development: You Can't Please All of the People, All of the Time

This month’s column from the Lifeboat Foundation, Nanotech Now, and AJOB Collaboration posted on Friday last week discusses the “rational” development of new technologies and the balance between a technology with great promise and unknown risk.…

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Published Articles (6)

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 10 Issue 5 - May 2010

Stem Cell Tourism and Doctors' Duties to Minors?A View From Canada Amy Zarzeczny

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 10 Issue 3 - Mar 2010

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on ?Trans Fat Bans and Human Freedom? David B. Resnik

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 10 Issue 3 - Mar 2010

Trans Fat Bans and Human Freedom David B. Resnik

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 7 Issue 6 - Jun 2007

Public Health, Public Trust and Lobbying Matthew K. Wynia

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 6 Issue 2 - Mar 2006

ELSI Priorities for Brain Imaging Judy Illes

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 4 Issue 1 - Jan 2004

Will Lower Drug Prices Jeopardize Drug Research? A Policy Fact Sheet Donald Light

News (29)

May 15, 2012

Unintended Consequence for Dialysis Patients as Drug Rule Changes (New York Times)

A shift last year by the federal government in how it pays for drugs to treat dialysis patients may have had an unintended and potentially dire consequence, according to new research: a significant jump in blood transfusions for patients who now may not be getting enough of the medications. The findings are seen by some experts as a stark illustration of how the government’s reimbursement policies can drive the practice of medicine.

May 07, 2012

Health disparities persist as overall care quality slowly improves (American Medical News)

Health disparities continue to plague the U.S. health care system, but small gains are giving federal officials some hope that progress will be made in years ahead with implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released its ninth annual National Healthcare Disparities Report and the National Healthcare Quality Report on April 20. The reports showed that although overall quality improved at a rate of 2.5% per year between 2002 and 2008, access to care did not.

May 02, 2012

Debate Over Who Should Be Allowed to Administer Anesthesia Moves to Courts (New York Times)

A long-running dispute over whether nurses should be allowed to administer anesthesia without doctor supervision has been playing out here and around the country in recent months, with some states insisting that such a move is needed to address the shortage of physicians in rural areas. The debate pits nurse anesthetists, who specialize in administering anesthesia and maintain that they are well equipped to treat patients on their own, against anesthesiologists, who are physicians and say nurses lack the necessary training.

May 02, 2012

Ethics: Withhold Genetic Test Results if Mother Will Abort? (Medscape)

Can a doctor lie about the results of a genetic test if he or she thinks that they might lead to an abortion? The State of Arizona is considering a law that might make it possible to make the answer to that question “yes.” They are passing a law that says they are not going to accept lawsuits for wrongful births. Wrongful birth lawsuits basically say that if a doctor doesn’t offer a test, doesn’t give the results of a test, or gives them inaccurately, the doctor still can’t be sued for making that kind of decision.

Apr 27, 2012

California Considers Criminalizing Unauthorized Collection, Use of Genetic Information (GenomeWeb)

California lawmakers are considering a new proposal that would address concerns about keeping genetic information private by making it illegal to analyze, share, or store an individual’s genetic information without that person’s written consent. The Senate Judiciary Committee in the state, which already has adopted enhanced public protections against discrimination based on genetic information, has now passed the California Genetic Information Privacy Act (SB 1267).

Apr 25, 2012

Obamacare collapse would put employers in charge (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

If the Supreme Court strikes down President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, don’t look to government for what comes next. Employers and insurance companies will take charge. They’ll borrow some ideas from Obamacare, ditch others, and push even harder to cut costs.

Apr 23, 2012

Assisted human reproduction and the law (CBC News)

An air of confusion surrounds Canada’s rules governing fertility issues, such as assisted human reproduction. Although the federal government passed a law in 2004 that tackled a wide swath of the socially and ethically controversial issues surrounding reproduction, covering everything from human cloning to payment for sperm, the law hasn’t lived up to expectations.

Apr 18, 2012

Bioethicists urge less regulatory burden for low-risk comparative effectiveness research (EurekAlert)

In an opinion article published in this week’s theme edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association focusing on comparative effectiveness research, a team of Johns Hopkins University bioethicists argues forcefully for streamlining federal restrictions on at least some low-risk clinical comparative effectiveness research, instead of easing them – as is now proposed – solely for low-risk social and behavior research involving surveys, interviews and focus groups.

Apr 17, 2012

It's Not About Broccoli!: The False Case Against Health Care (The Atlantic)

The challengers of the health insurance mandate have focused on the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. As conservative Judge Silberman held, the text giving Congress the power to “regulate commerce” does seem to include a power to mandate purchases, given 1780s dictionary definitions of “regulate.” The challengers argue that this plain meaning should nonetheless be resisted because otherwise the clause would lack any “limiting principle,” and thus could be used to force us to buy GM cars, cell phones, burial insurance, or — their favorite bugaboo — broccoli.

Apr 16, 2012

Can the Innovator Class Save Healthcare? (The Atlantic)

Perched on the banks of the Potomac River, the TEDMED gathering weighed in last week on what it considered the greatest challenges facing healthcare. A meeting closely associated with the high tech-optimism of Silicon Valley and other outposts of America’s innovator class, TEDMED came east this year from it’s previous home in San Diego. The idea was to bring the gathering’s ethos and its troupe of entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, doers, and artists to our nation’s political capital.

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