HEALTH DISPARITIES BLOG

July 31, 2009

links for 2009-07-31

• NEJM -- The Future of Bioethics
  Book Review in NEJM: The author argues for a "patient-centered bioethics" that pays attention to these problems and maintains a strong alliance with primary care medicine. This is, he contends, "the side of medicine most concerned about talking with and listening to patients and forging long-term relationships" with them. Brody also argues that bioethicists should talk with and listen to communities (not just patients), and in an insightful chapter, he compares and critiques several models of community dialogue.
• NEJM -- The Burden of Health Care Costs for Working Families -- Implications for Reform
  Because Americans in the upper half of the income distribution devote a smaller share of their income to health care, their standards of living have yet to decline, but they, too, will do so in the coming decades if current trends continue. If health care reform based on private health insurance is to be sustainable, it has to be affordable for Americans across the entire income distribution. Achieving this goal will require both substantial cost containment and shifts in the distribution of health care costs within the population.