Medicine and Social Justice – the First Year: An Index

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Thanksgiving weekend – today, November 28, specifically – marks the first anniversary of the Medicine and Social Justice blog. I thought I would review the topics I have covered, grouping them generally into several areas. This might enable anyone interested in a topic (particularly one that is not very time-sensitive) to go back and look at old ones that they might not have read. Also, of course, it gives me a way to organize my collected works book. Right! J
I have chosen the groupings: Health Reform and Funding (43), Primary Care (11), Social Justice (21), General Medical Topics (23), Medical Education (6), Other (4) (largely memorials). A few are “double-listed”, and I didn’t list a few small ones, so the total number of columns is 110.

Health Reform and Funding
Friday, November 28, 2008: Universal Health Coverage
Monday, December 1, 2008: Medicare "Advantage": Your Gift to the Insurance Industry
Friday, December 5, 2008: Not Getting What We Pay For
Thursday, December 25, 2008: A Rational Health Care System
Tuesday, January 6, 2009: Enthoven: Consumer Choice Health Plan -- Again
Thursday, January 8, 2009: Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General?
Saturday, February 7, 2009: Universal Health Insurance or Universal Quality Health Care?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009: Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of HHS
Sunday, March 15, 2009: Bargaining down the medical bills
Sunday, April 5, 2009: "Sick Around America": A little bit sickening
Friday, April 10, 2009: Does the nation need a clear policy on a right to basic health care?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009: The “Basic Law of Modern Health Care”
Saturday, April 25, 2009: The Social Ethic and Covering Everyone: Reinhardt and Himmelstein
Saturday, May 2, 2009: Health disadvantages of Americans compared to Europeans
Wednesday, May 6, 2009: Health Care Thought Experiments: Mile Long Questions Traveling at the Speed of Light (Guest column by Donald Frey, MD)
Friday, May 8, 2009: What is wrong with the idea of "Consumer Directed Health Care": A "Technical" Answer to the "Thought Experiment" (Guest column by Robert Ferrer, MD)
Saturday, May 16, 2009: Health Care Industry Pledge to Cut Costs: No News at All
Thursday, May 28, 2009: "The Nation"'s Health Care Bottom Line is Bottom of the Barrel
Friday, June 5, 2009: Health Insurers "Balk"
Thursday, June 11, 2009: Medicare Costs: "All Politics are Local"
Monday, June 15, 2009: Health Reform and the "Public Option"
Thursday, June 18, 2009: “No Single Payer”: Sebelius – making policy for the powerful
Monday, June 22, 2009: Government sponsored health coverage: The Good, the Cautionary, and the Ugly
Wednesday, June 24, 2009: Dear Senator Brownback: A letter my Kansas Senator
Saturday, June 27, 2009: Dear Senator Brownback, #2
Sunday, July 5, 2009: European vs. US Health Systems: Which one has the real drawbacks?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009: Proposals to Tax Health Benefits and Institute Individual Mandates
Saturday, July 25, 2009: Integrated Health Systems or Thinking Inside the Box?
Thursday, August 6, 2009: Doctors, their Patients, and Health Reform
Tuesday, August 11, 2009: Health Care Shoutdowns: Liars and Demagogues
Wednesday, August 19, 2009: Advance Directives, not "Death Panels"
Sunday, August 23, 2009: A Modest Proposal: Bribe the Insurance Companies
Wednesday, August 26, 2009: The "Super Rich" and Our Healthcare
Sunday, August 30, 2009: Senator Ted Kennedy, Social Justice, and Healthcare for the People
Thursday, September 3, 2009: Public / Private Funding: We're All in This Together
Tuesday, September 8, 2009: Will the President turn the “health reform” discussion around to real reform? Can he?
Monday, September 21, 2009: Medicare for All: Moran's logic, not the idea, is flawed
Wednesday, September 30, 2009: Some good, but a lot still wrong, in health reform bills
Sunday, October 4, 2009: Seniors and Medicare: Beware not simply "Scare Mongers" but lying hypocrites
Tuesday, October 20, 2009: Red, Blue, and Purple: The Math of Health Care Spending
Wednesday, November 4, 2009: Poverty and Uninsurance Diverge: So let’s solve the problem!
Sunday, November 8, 2009: Celebrating the Defeat of the Opponents of Health Reform
Thursday, November 12, 2009: HR 3962 is still a bad bill, and Stupak-Pitts is a scandal

Primary Care
Thursday, December 11, 2008: A Quality Health System Needs More Primary Care Physicians
Friday, January 2, 2009: Student Debt, Resident Hours, and Primary Care Redux
Thursday, January 15, 2009: Ten Biggest Myths Regarding Primary Care in the Future (Guest Column: Robert Bowman, MD)
Friday, April 3, 2009: More Primary Care Doctors or Just More Doctors?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009: Primary Care Shortage makes Times Front Page
Thursday, May 21, 2009: Primary Care, Pediatrics, and Physician Distribution
Sunday, July 12, 2009: The Primary Care Extension Service
Thursday, September 3, 2009: Public / Private Funding: We're All in This Together
Thursday, October 8, 2009: "Uncomplicated" Primary Care?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009: "War on Specialists?": Wall St. Journal defends the status quo!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009: Primary Care’s Image: A Problem?

Social Justice
Saturday, November 29, 2008: Mumbai, Valley Stream, and the Economic Meltdown
Wednesday, December 17, 2008: Notes on Diversity
Sunday, December 21, 2008:The financial sector, for a change…
Tuesday, January 27, 2009: Social Justice: Economic Stimulus and Bailout
Sunday, January 11, 2009:Mr. Bush’s Legacy: The Global Gag Rule
Friday, January 23, 2009: President Obama rescinds Global Gag Rule
Monday, January 19, 2009: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Inauguration
Monday, February 9, 2009: Masters of the Universe: They need a long fall
Sunday, February 15, 2009: New Orleans: Have we still no shame?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009: Quote of the Day (with apologies to Don McCanne)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009: Mexican Murders and US Guns
Saturday, April 18, 2009: Medical Ethics and Social Justice
Wednesday, July 1, 2009: Stonewall: 40 years Later
Sunday, August 2, 2009: Not "Special Interests": The Wealthy and Powerful
Sunday, August 16, 2009: Should it be a crime to be poor, or, instead, to criminalize poverty?
Sunday, August 30, 2009: Senator Ted Kennedy, Social Justice, and Healthcare for the People
Wednesday, September 16, 2009: Joe Wilson: Racism in America rears its ugly head
Monday, October 12, 2009: Lessons from World War I
Saturday, October 17, 2009: The actions of criminal settlers in Israel cannot be allowed to define the Jewish people
Friday, October 23, 2009: "Wall St. Smarts"? Maybe the smart people should be doing something productive
Sunday, November 22, 2009: Health Workers and Our Wars (Guest column by Seiji Yamada, MD)

General Medical Topics
Thursday, December 4, 2008: Hospitalists
Monday, December 8, 2008: Physician Conflict of Interest
Tuesday, December 30, 2008: Community Health Centers
Thursday, January 22, 2009: The "Neurontin Legacy"
Monday, February 2, 2009: Prevention and Cost
Friday, February 13, 2009: Economics and Disease Prevention
Thursday, February 19, 2009: Performing procedures: Who is capable and how should we pay?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009: Quality and Chronic Disease Management
Thursday, February 26, 2009: Defining "Streetlight" Research
Saturday, March 7, 2009: “The Feminization of Medicine and Population Health…”
Wednesday, March 11, 2009: “Conservative” Drug Prescribing
Saturday, March 21, 2009: PSA Screening: What is the value?
Thursday, March 26, 2009: Medicare Costs in Rural America: A case of reaping what we haven't sown? (Guest column by Donald Frey, MD)
Monday, March 30, 2009: Immigrant and Refugee Health
Tuesday, April 14, 2009: Conscientious Objection in Medicine
Saturday, April 18, 2009: Medical Ethics and Social Justice
Tuesday, May 12, 2009: Clinical Guidelines and Technology Assessment
Wednesday, May 13, 2009: Addendum: Medtronic back in the news
Thursday, July 16, 2009: Fetal Monitoring: Why it will continue
Wednesday, July 29, 2009: Prevention and the “Trap of Meaning”
Tuesday, October 27, 2009: PSA Screening: “One of Medicine's Great Success Stories"? (Guest column by Robert Ferrer, MD MPH)
Saturday, October 31, 2009: Dietary Supplements can be Dangerous for your Health
Wednesday, November 25, 2009: Breast Cancer Screening and Evidence-based Medicine

Medical Education
Wednesday, December 3, 2008: Medical Resident Work Hours
Tuesday, December 9, 2008: Resident Work Hours: Addendum
Sunday, December 14, 2008: Medical Student Selection
Monday, May 25, 2009: Funding Graduate Medical Education
Saturday, September 12, 2009: Are we training physicians to be empathic? Apparently not.
Friday, September 25, 2009: Rankings of Medical Schools: Do they tell us anything?

Other
Sunday, November 30, 2008: Steven B. Tamarin, MD
Sunday, May 31, 2009: In Memoriam George Tiller
Monday, June 8, 2009: More on Dr. Tiller
Sunday, November 22, 2009: Health Workers and Our Wars (Guest column by Seiji Yamada, MD)

If you have been following Medicine and Social Justice since early on, or are a new follower, or an occasional visitor, you may want to see if there are any that you missed and are of interest to you.

And, in the spirit of the season, I thank you very much for your time and attention, and hope that it has been worth the investment.
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