Healthcare issues for interviews

[Rogue990]

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I was wondering how you guys suggest learning about current healthcare issues (managed care, uninsured, euthanasia, patient assisted suicide, etc) for my interviews coming up. Any particular journals, websites, or newspapers?

Any help is greatly appeciated. Thanks.

 

[charik]

I was wondering the same thing. We could have a debate about them here?

 

[Swiper]

Rogue,

Here are a few good sites - pulled from a similar thread sometime last week:

http://eduserv.hscer.washington.edu/bioethics/topics/index.html

http://www.publicagenda.org/

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/WorldNewsTonight/health_care_subindex.html

They contain a broad look at several issues - ethical, informational and otherwise.

Good luck!

 

[Rogue990]

nice. thanks a lot swiper!

 

[beastmaster]

Originally posted by Swiper The Fox
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/WorldNewsTonight/health_care_subindex.html

There was a review of ABC's Critical Condition Healthcare week-long special that exposed it for being very biased with a liberal slant. They only present it from one perspective and dismiss the one opposite to it.

 

[duka]

I had three interviews last week and all of them asked me about the feeding tube decision in FL and what I thought of the govener's actions vs the family's decisions vs the husband's rights.

 

[Rogue990]

can anyone post a link on the feeding tube decision?

 

[periodic]

If you want to find news pieces about the feeding tube case in FL...i'd suggest using Google News to do a keyword search. It's great for pulling recent news from many, many sources.

In general, you can develop a good working knowledge of healthcare issues by following the Washington Post health section, NY Times health section, and/or the WSJ health industry section. The NYTimes and the Post are free, but the Journal isn't. I decided to pay for an online subscription a while back and haven't regretted it at all.

Unfortunately, the preeminant healthcare journal, Health Affairs, isn't free, but if you can get your mits on it, it's a great source for original findings. The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, etc, will also have pieces on healthcare issues.

For slightly biased perspectives, you can go to the websites of various groups (the AMA, PhRMA, the AAMC, American Hospital Association, AFL-CIO, etc) and find their position papers on topics that affect them.

Or you could go to the websites of policy think-tanks, like the Brookings Institution or Heritage Foundation, to see their stances (mostly for policy issues).

You could also subscribe to the AMSA (American Medical Student Association) health policy listserv. People usually send links to healthcare-related stories and news to it every day, and it has the added benefit of giving you a med student perspective at times.

For ethical issues, this website is great (I found out about it here on SDN):
http://eduserv.hscer.washington.edu/bioethics/topics/index.html

 

[jlee9531]

is euthanasia and physician assisted suicide not the same thing?

 

[Newquagmire]

Originally posted by jlee9531
is euthanasia and physician assisted suicide not the same thing?

hahaha, well that's an ethics question in and of itself.

 

[periodic]

Usually, euthanasia refers to when doctors themselves commit the act that directly leads to a patient's death...ie, the doc actually injects a lethal drug.


Physician-assisted suicide, on the other hand, refers to when doctors enable a patient to take their own life. For example, handing the patient a needle with a lethal drug, which the patient then uses on him or herself.

The whole thing's more complicated than my simple examples, but you get the idea. The main difference is in who actively does the deed.

 

[shawred]

Euthanasia can be classified many ways. It can be active or passive and involuntary or voluntary. Physician assisted suicide is voluntary passive euthanasia. If the physician actually "does the deed," it is active involuntary, etc.