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Showing posts from February, 2020

The Virus This Time: Ill-Informed, Incompetent Leadership Enabling Suppression of Free Speech, Intimidation of Whistleblowers, Propaganda and Disinformation

Unfortunately, the rapid progression of coronavirus is providing a demonstration of the dysfunction, and worse, that can be produced by bad leadership in health care and public health. Ill-Informed Leadership During the Trump regime we began to find striking examples of top government officials expressing ill-informed, if not outright ignorant opinions about medical, health care and public

Rising Tide of Disinformation about Coronavirus: the Roles of Ideologues, Quacks, Russians, and US Politicians

Introduction: Propaganda and Disinformation in Health Care We used to write about propaganda and disinformation used to promote health care goods and services (stealth marketing campaigns), and advocate for policies favorable to private health care organizations (stealth health policy advocacy and stealth lobbying).  Some stealth marketing, lobbying and policy advocacy campaigns encompass not

What the Heck Happened to Surprise Billing Legislation? (Or, it’s never too late for the lobbyists to win.)

With constituents pressing for something to remedy unexpected liabilities incurred from “surprise” medical bills, it was expected that surprise medical bill legislation would pass federally in December 2019 as part of an end-of-year legislation package. House and Senate committees had worked for months on consensus legislation that was ready to go, but that fell through at the last moment. What

The Big Spin Out: 2020 Revolving Door Update

In  2020, cases of the revolving door accumulated quickly.  The Old School Outgoing Revolving Door Let us begin with cases of the old fashioned outgoing revolving door, that is, of people leaving leadership positions in governmental bodies which regulate health care or make health care policy, then soon obtaining jobs in the health care industry, particularly organizations which they