Comments on: The Mondrian Awards

By: david

david — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:21:51 +0000

Excellent idea, we also ought to have an award for most overpaid health care PR shill. We can call it the Goodman Award.

By: Hal Urschel

Hal Urschel — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:11:14 +0000

Great idea!

By: Bill Waters

Bill Waters — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:10:01 +0000

The Mondrian Award concept is great, and I can’t imagine a time when there have been more viable candidates.

But the big winners were the original perpetrators in 1942 and 1965.

By: StillaScot

StillaScot — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:10:10 +0000

If it were only your fans who patrolled this site then you could bask in their adoration. Some of us though know more about health care and health care policy than you would care us to know and so find your humor to be destructive of improved health care solutions rather than the amusement that you hoped to generate.

Why do health insurance companies want the Pelosi/Reid plan that you mock? Have they gone over to the dark side too? Is it getting a little lonely on top of the hill?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:28:17 +0000

You missed an opportunity here. The Mondrian Award should be accompanied by a Moebius Prize, for the endless repetition of the same blunder.

By: Joel White

Joel White — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:26:10 +0000

Excellent! Truly brilliant.

By: Brant S. Mittler, MD JD

Brant S. Mittler, MD JD — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:24:58 +0000

“Yet according to MIT economist Amy Finkelstein, it has improved the health care of the elderly not one whit.”

I think you’ve gone a little overboard with this statement. Just downloaded Finkelstein’s study. It raises a lot of questions.

This kind of analysis shows the problems of economists trying to run health care policy. It’s just as dangerous as former Clinton “whiz kid” Atul Gawande.

I bet you personally want to check into a coronary care unit (“CICU”) if God forbid you have a heart attack or a serious cardiac rhythm problem. The rise of Medicare spending is a lot more complicated than economist Finkelstein — and you — understand or let on. How about factoring in the role of randomized clinical trials and the spread of evidence based medicine and practice guidelines and societal demands for physician and hospital accountability? It all takes money. The private sector — see HMOs — doesn’t want to pay for it — or pays for it after taking off it’s shareholder and executive pay demanded top 15 – 25% or more. Our society believes in a system of justice that provides state of the art medical technology to not just those who can afford it. Why should elderly poor African Americans in Mississippi not enjoy CICU’s to the same extent as rich seniors in Darien, Connecticut? Right now, the biggest social safety net we have besides Medicare is the prison system. And I know prisons are a favorite subject for free market proponents. While we’re on the subject of Medicare, I’d like to see you campaign against Medicare HMOs which cost 12-22% more than fee-for-service Medicare.

This kind of analysis and your reducing it to the sentence above does serious scholarship no favor. You and Finkelstein sound like medical Luddites.

It’s this kind of mean-spirited policy analysis that’s going to result in a big backlash by voters next 2008 and cost all of us a lot more money and heartache than we deserve.

I suggest you tone down the rhetoric. This is not reflective of your usual careful analysis.

By: Regina Herzlinger

Regina Herzlinger — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:05:45 +0000

Hilarious

By: Milla Jones

Milla Jones — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:04:51 +0000

Clever, clever, clever — I am gravely concerned that our health care community does not understand the situation if a Democrat is elected President — How can we rally that behemoth industry into action?

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:02:28 +0000

You are gooood!