Healthcare Reform
September 7, 2025
The Wilderness Rules: A Forgotten Compass for Power and Principle
In my recent book Common Sense Medicine: Making America Healthy Again (before RFK purloined it) I discuss ways to push power down to the people, which is what helps make people…
Healthcare Reform
June 30, 2025
ISEMPH Poster
HOW DOES OPTIMIZING OUR DEFENSES CHANGE THE SYSTEM? Knowles and Boucher described our airway defenses, pointing out the major role of the mucin glycans: “It appears that mucin…
Healthcare Reform
September 22, 2017
Healthcare Revisited–Again!
at Common Sense Medicine know that any healthcare system must pay attention to significant facts in order to work. We also have suggestions to make it work. Fact 1. Healthcare is…
Healthcare Reform
June 22, 2017
Empowering People vs. Plutocrats
Evan McMullin wants to elect a bunch of Independents to balance the dominant powers in our government. In order to do that he needs some help.
Healthcare Reform
June 9, 2017
A Better Way to Address Entitlements and Regulation
Empowering individuals with both finances and information works better than entitlements and regulation. This approach doesn't lead to dependence.
Healthcare Reform
May 3, 2017
Drug deaths: Sins of commission or sins of omission?
While criticizing Duterte for killing drug users, we ignore the deaths of our users, where six times as many die annually. There is a better way.
Healthcare Reform
April 29, 2017
Common Sense Medicine Looks at Government
Government is more than defense. It include a more perfect union, justice, tranquility, the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty – and we aren't doing well.
Healthcare Reform
March 28, 2017
Election, Russia, and Twitter
The important thing about Russian interference in our elections is preventing a recurrence. We also need to see more clearly where the problem is. Here are some points and…
Healthcare Reform
January 23, 2017
Twitter: bees, bugs, and superbugs
as a means of communication, is big in the bug world. Bacteria release chemicals to communicate–it’s called quorum sensing–and when the message gets loud enough the colony shifts…
Healthcare Reform
January 13, 2017
Sarah “Jo” Baker MD is still important.
Dr. Baker shows why illness care is not a good model
Healthcare Reform
November 17, 2016
Let's Make America Safe Again
safety is not found in a police state; it's found in the co-operation that in itself is built on a safe environment
Healthcare Reform
August 15, 2016
Women: A Common
women's values can play a role in reducing violence.
Healthcare Reform
November 19, 2015
Immigration–a biological perspective
Our bodies do a better job with immigration than our governments. Can we learn anything here?
Healthcare Reform
November 18, 2015
Don't accept the terrorist's strategy
terrorist want to produce the most expensive response they can for a minimal expense. So far we have accepted that strategy. We need to stop it.
Healthcare Reform
July 17, 2015
An Alternative to Don't Feed the Animals
Charity is more likely to make us feel good; if we really want to help we need to empower the other to make their own way.
Healthcare Reform
November 16, 2014
Restructuring Healthcare Alternatives
Many would like to use creative destruction on our healthcare system. That's the wrong approach. Complex adaptive systems can be tweaked very effectively.
Healthcare Reform
November 16, 2014
Singapore healthcare works
The people of Singapore are part of their healthcare system. Unlike our 3rd party payer system, they play an active role. Their marketplace medicine works.
Healthcare Reform
November 12, 2014
War On Drugs Vs. Rational Thinking
Our war on drugs is founded on our fear of them. Fear stimulates primitive responses that are not necessarily the most rational. We need to choose better.
Healthcare Reform
November 6, 2014
Cyborg Science: Just Say No
Cyborg science is predictable. Human beings aren't. Cyborg science is mechanical thinking, but we can adapt in novel ways that are not predictable.
Healthcare Reform
August 26, 2014
Ferguson and most of our cities are short in community capital: here is how to rebuild it.
Strengthen Community Capital so there are no more Fergusons. Drugs and prisons also show how short we are in community capital. How to rebuild community.
Healthcare Reform
July 17, 2014
But not if you have insurance?
Insurance is designed to pay for the unexpected crisis. Health insurance started that way in the U.S. but gradually, because the companies we work for were paying for it and…
Healthcare Reform
May 27, 2014
Thank You, Standard and Poor's
Thank you Standard and Poor’s for telling us what we already know. Now can we do anything about it? Right now many of us feel a bit like Clark Little as he waited under this…
Healthcare Reform
March 7, 2014
What's WIR?
Could the WIR help us, or Greece, or Spain? Common Sense Medicine is all about resilience, about giving people the information and the power they need to make better decisions.…
Healthcare Reform
January 23, 2014
Partisan Politics on a Larger Scale
As a physician, I am endlessly intrigued by the processes of adaptation that has led to our being on this earth; and I am amazed that these processes show up so dramatically in…
Healthcare Reform
January 23, 2014
The Crisis in Healthcare
The Institute of Medicine was established by President Nixon in 1970. It is part of the American Academy of Sciences and its membership is taken from that prestigious group. It…
Healthcare Reform
January 23, 2014
What Tea Party and Occupy Have in Common
The Tea Party sees a major problem in the size of government and its incursion, influence, and control into more aspects of our lives than is warranted by the Constitution; they…
Healthcare Reform
November 14, 2012
Making Health Care Affordable
Saving American Health and Healthcare: A view from the margins. If Wendell Berry is right then we ought not to be looking to our temples of healing and learning for solutions to…
Healthcare Reform
November 14, 2012
Medicare Reform?
Medicare reform is shaping up to be the issue for our time. “We, the people,” like our bread buttered on both sides and we don’t like change. But Medicare is continuing to grow…
Healthcare Reform
April 1, 2012
Markets, Medicine And Moral Hazard–What Works
Sandel argues that medicine doesn't belong in the marketplace. But removing it has been very costly, and it hasn't made us any more healthy. There is a mixed option.
Healthcare Reform
August 11, 2011
Letter to Berwick
An open letter to Don Berwick Dear Don, I was really glad when President Obama chose you to lead the Department of Health ad Human Services. First of all you’re a pediatrician;…
Healthcare Reform
Archive
Choosing Differently: The Reptilian War on Drugs
Our drug policy is based on our irrational fear of mind altering drugs. We need a more rational policy.