Tag Archives: health care

“Letting Go” – The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande, on giving up life to live

July 30, 2010

Dr. Atul Gawande’s latest New Yorker piece is described as another examination on on what’s behind the cost of health care, but it serves more as a lesson on how to both cope with the finality of death and to… Continue reading →

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David Brooks: Maybe Sandra Bullock should’ve stayed in the kitchen

March 31, 2010

So David Brooks in the NYT, using an almost-current event (Sandra Bullock winning the Oscars, then getting humiliated by hubby Jesse James) takes another (not half-bad) try at an argument that feminists might characterize as “Maybe women would be happier… Continue reading →

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NYT: Radiation (IMRT) horror stories; Woman has massive hole burned in chest because several doctors and physicists didn’t know “in” from “out”

January 24, 2010

Yet another case study on how the most educated of our professionals are not fail-safe. Not just not-fail-safe, but not not-able-to-tell-up-from-down-safe. The New York Times has an incredible story today, apparently one of many, into the dangers of new radiation… Continue reading →

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Chartjunk? Slate’s Kaus vs. NYT’s David Leonhardt on hospital beds and better health care

January 10, 2010

An example of chartjunk: several colors and 26,000+ pixels to describe five hard-to-read numbers David Leonhardt put forth a gee-that’s-unexpected-but-possible thesis in the Dec. 30 New York Times: Limiting hospital beds forces hospitals to provide more efficient care; allowing limitless… Continue reading →

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Bad Nurses, and Our Tragic Inability to Track Them

December 7, 2009

On Sunday, my ProPublica colleagues Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Times, put out a story examining the lack of standards in the temp nursing agency, a dangerous situation considering California’s desperate shortage of nursing… Continue reading →

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