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I have been following the Obama healthcare reform debate from a distance.The whole exercise seems too messy and too many people with too many agendas.
I have not come across many "Larger view" positions. Often, The debate turns to hair-splitting and sometimes turns rascist too.Most people online seem to misunderstand the whole point in this reform. Quite a few of the Cyber-citizens simply parrot against the old enemy,"Communism", while others do not even accept health as a fundamental human right!
Richard L. Reece is author, blogger, and health reform commentator. I read this piece on Medinnovationblog and found it neatly sums up the internal position of most of the concerned parties. And it takes a broader look at the whole issue, without debating too many nuances.Like someone said, "If it takes more than 3 sentences to explain your analysis, go rethink".
Obama, Doctors, Nurses, and Health Reform: "These days Obama and his committee, Organizing for America (OFA), are busily rallying doctors and nurses to bolster his case for a government overhaul of health care.
This week Obama and OFA assembled 150 doctors – all wearing white coats, many passed out by the White House if doctors didn’t bring their own – to stand by the President in the Rose Garden. OFA has bought ads featuring doctors and nurses on national cable TV channels. And just yesterday, OFA sent out emails to the nation’s nurses asking for displays of support and telling they could order pins proclaiming “Another nurse for reform.” The thought behind this frenzied recruiting of doctors and nurses is that the public admires and trusts doctors and nurses.
This strategy has pratfalls, beartraps, and pitfalls.
• In the first place, every doctor and nurse I know supports some form of reform, but not necessary the Obama brand featuring deeper federal intervention.
• Secondly, in the October 4 WSJ, three former AMA presidents came out against a “costly and inefficient government overall, “ instead saying a giant step towards reform would be enabling individuals to buy policies in any state, not just the state in which they live.
- Thirdly, Obama’s challenge in not persuading the public that doctors and nurses support his plan, but convincing the 270 million Americans already covered, and happy with their coverage and their doctors and nurses, to back his plan.
President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul faces an uncertain battle in the Senate after a narrow weekend victory in the House revealed the continuing divide among Democrats. The bill passed by a 220-215 margin late Saturday after fractious debate. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the measure. One Republican, Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, unexpectedly voted in favor.
The measure spends $1.05 trillion over a decade to provide health insurance to an additional 36 million Americans and creates a new public insurance plan by 2013. It requires most Americans to carry insurance, creates a new exchange where they can shop for it and gives the lowest earners tax credits to help them pay for it.
A new advanced facility at the University of Minnesota is harnessing big ideas for medical devices.
It's called the Medical Devices Center.
"I don't think there's any place across the country in an academic setting with this kind of facility," said Art Erdman, director of the Medical Devices Center.
Located on the East Bank, the center is a place for engineers and medical professionals to come together and capture the ideas of graduate students often lost when they graduate and move on. "[Ideas] are lost all the time," Erdman noted.
At the center, medical device prototypes from the simple to the complex can be mocked up faster than the weeks it can take if a design has to be made off site. Sometimes prototypes can be finished in a day.
One prototype currently on display that was created at the university is a device that would conduct radial breast compression for MRI's, potentially replacing the bilateral breast compression plates that are currently used.
In addition to prototype manufacturing and providing facilities to test devices on tissue, the center also has new 3D cameras that will be used in about 40 operating rooms around campus.
These cameras will allow groups of engineering students to sit in on surgeries remotely so they can help medical experts solve problems.
Surgeons will also be able to see the students on monitors in the OR and communicate with them during surgery.
"Right now you're lucky if you can get into a surgery suite as an engineer. [They] maybe allow one to two people at a time," engineering graduate student Nathan Knutson said. "So to be able to project those surgeries here and have the prototyping equipment to sit down and start solving the surgeon's problems with their devices and handheld manipulators we can really come across with some great innovations and breakthroughs."
Not only will graduate students be able to advance their ideas more easily, the center has also hired a team of engineering and medical experts well established in their fields to brainstorm ideas.
And a new fellows program will bring together four experts this fall.
"We put them in a think tank and for one year they seek out relevant clinical needs," Fellows program director Marie Johnson said. "So they actually put on scrubs and go over to the OR's, sit in the clinics, watch rehab, participate in all aspects of medical care and they ask stupid questions."
Those stupid questions though, could lead to the next big idea.
Erdman said harnessing these ideas will be good for the University of Minnesota, and potentially great for the state.
"Arguably, this is the center in the United States for medical devices, certainly in cardiology and urology, so how do we sustain that?" he asked. "It's very important for the economy of the state."
