David Williams

Kaiser Health News tries hard to understand Mitt Romney’s Medicare plans and ultimately concludes it’s difficult to figure out what it all means. Not surprisingly, Romney is none too quick to get into specifics.

Doctors can and often do prescribe medications for different purposes than what the FDA has approved them for. But drug companies face tight restrictions on communicating with physicians about these so-called “off-label” uses.

Politico argues that Mitt Romney may be haunted by Massachusetts health care costs. I disagree for a couple reasons.

Venture capital investment in New England dropped 45 percent in the most recent quarter, largely due to fewer deals in biotechnology and medical devices. The national trend is down, too, though not as much, according to a new report from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Now that Herman Cain sits atop at least some GOP presidential polls, I decided to have a quick peek to see what he has to say about health care and how it fits into his catchy sounding 9-9-9 plan. I may well be missing something but at first glance I don’t see how his policies mesh.

So far, the Republican frontrunners have not engaged in a credible debate about health care. Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have nothing to say on the topic of any consequence. Trying to pin Romney down as the father of ObamaCare doesn’t really count as a bold policy.

I smiled when I read that some physicians were taking the case for medical malpractice reform to the congressional super committee that is charged with cutting the federal deficit.

I recently had some physical therapy for a minor injury. Since the office forgot to charge my co-pay the first time I went in I received a so-called EOB from my insurance carrier, BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts. EOBs are a holdover from the mainframe era: arcane, inflexible reports that are hard to interpret.

Consumer Reports notes that patients are avoiding filling prescriptions and seeing the doctor due to financial pressures.

Happiness in this World has an interesting post from last November, which tells the story of a misdiagnosis of one physician by another. The problem: “early closure,” or jumping to conclusions.