Friday morning the opening session included E.J. Dionne, a syndicated columnist and Dr. Atul Gawande. I found this session particularly interesting. For one Mr Dionne is clever and quite funny. Dr. Gawande is a surgeon and a writer who previously worked as an adviser to the Clinton administration on health policy. He told a gripping story of a woman who found out that her health insurance was going to be resolved in a few days due to her job closing. She was carrying a term pregnancy and she convinced her obstetrician to induce her labor since she feared the reality of going into labor with no insurance coverage. During the induction she had dangerous vaginal bleeding and underwent an emergency cesarean section. Her insurance company denied her claim and she received a bill for over $17,000. Dr. Gawande urges that bankruptcy from medical debt must end, that it cannot be an economic crisis for business, and that physicians, hospitals, and drug companies must all be held accountable for making health care better, safer, and to contain costs.
I would encourage the physicians to listen to Dr. Gwande's talk. Go to the plenary on January 30 and if you don't want to listen to Mr Dionne (though his talk is also very good) forward to 32:20.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&hc=3099
As an addition, Dr. Manriquez has read both of his books and stated, "He's one of my favorite writers!" I haven't read them yet, but if you're interested, the titles are Complications and Better. Here is a link to his website.
http://www.gawande.com/
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