After attending a policy lecture in 1994, with health care reform at the forefront of national debate, I became interested in an ad hoc non-profit organization devoted to individual rights in medicine. Encouraged by an editor, who wrote a letter of recommendation, I became the group’s editorial director, creating the organization’s Web site. For five years, I wrote speeches, articles, and patient advocacy letters, developed educational programs, debated an advocate of socialized medicine at Antioch University and spoke at universities, clubs, and hospitals. I continued to serve as the organization’s newsletter editor until I stepped down to write full-time in 2008. I continue to cover health care policy on my blog.
John Porter
Posted March 25, 2009
John Porter was a U.S. Congressman from Illinois for 21 years, serving on the powerful Appropriations Committee, and as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. All government health agencies and programs, except military and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and all government education agencies and programs were under the jurisdiction of his subcommittee. Before his election to Congress, he served in the Illinois House of Representatives. Today, Mr. Porter, named by a magazine as one of Washington’s “top 50 lobbyists”, serves as a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm Hogan & Hartson. This interview focuses on John Porter’s thoughts about science. Read more >>
Book Review: A History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture
Posted February 8, 2009
The powerful act of suicide, once a shameful family secret and still largely taboo in a society where newspaper obituaries regularly avoid its mention, continues to affect our lives and our public discourse. As Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s crusade brings the debate into renewed focus, Georges Minois’s A History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, is especially relevant. It’s also very useful. Read more >>
Interview: HSA Bank President Kirk Hoewisch
Posted February 8, 2009
The year was 1901 and someone in Howards Grove, Wisconsin, observed that the first automobile to appear in town was driven by a man from nearby Sheboygan. A century later, the town is making its mark on another new vehicle—which has the potential to revolutionize how one pays for medical treatment. It is the Health Savings Account (HSA)—widely available to most Americans in the growing money-for-medicine movement—and this Midwestern town’s bank is playing a prominent, if unlikely, role in advancing the radically free market-oriented idea. Read more >>
Interview: Thomas Carter
Posted January 31, 2009
Known for his movies about daring individualists, director Thomas Carter (Coach Carter, Save the Last Dance, Swing Kids) turns to the story of America’s first doctor to successfully separate craniopagus (Siamese) twins in a Turner Network Television (TNT) original movie, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. The movie premieres at 8 p.m., Saturday, February 7. Read more >>
California’s Socialized Medicine Rising
This 2005 essay was published by the non-profit charitable organization Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM). Mr. Holleran has served as editorial adviser since 1994.
This month, in a 73-page position paper, California’s insurance commissioner, John Garamendi, proposed a government takeover of medicine. Read more >>
First HSA President William West, M.D.
This 2005 interview was conducted for the non-profit charitable organization Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM). Mr. Holleran has served as editorial adviser since 1994.
Pennsylvania-based First HSA is a profitable business run by what Ayn Rand called “the forgotten man of socialized medicine”: the doctor. Read more >>
Dr. Dean Edell
Variations of this 2001 interview were published in the Hartford Courant, Buffalo News and Los Angeles Daily News.
Before there were Drs. Laura, Ruth, and Drew, there was Dr. Dean—Dr. Dean Edell. At a time when most news networks have a regular stable of on-air doctors—one for every calamity—Edell was a pioneer as one of America’s first media doctors. Read more >>
Autonomy Makes the Best Medicine
This 2000 article was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and in Los Angeles Times’ local newspapers.
75-year-old cancer surgeon John Stehlin’s story captures the uniqueness of the doctor/patient relationship, fully explored in The Best Medicine: Doctors, Patients and the Covenant of Caring, (St. Martin’s Press, 221 pages, $23.95). Read more >>
Prescription Drug Plans Buyer Beware
This 2000 interview was published in the Detroit News, Buffalo News, and Los Angeles Daily News.
Today’s seniors are at the center of a dramatic health care policy debate that has surprised political experts by becoming the focus of the 2000 presidential campaign. Read more >>
Boomerang The Clinton Health Care Plan That Failed
This 1996 book review was published in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Autopsies are never fun and are usually messy. Boomerang, a post-mortem of the Clinton administration’s failed health-care plan written by Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, falls into this category. Read more >>