The current Medicare operation—reimbursing medical goods and services to a growing number of people without basing the reimbursement benefit on the actual cost of the services—is unsustainable, but there are some possible remedies.
A case that illustrates how Western medicine's body or mind approach to diagnosis and treatment can differ from that of many patients from non-Western cultures.
Physicians have a duty to learn the facts and use their medical expertise to allay patients' fears rather than order unnecessary tests when a certain disease or condition receives a great deal of media coverage.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.
Mark T. Hughes, MD, MA and Bimal H. Ashar, MD, MBA
Physicians are urged to evaluate an asymptomatic patient's request for CT screening and use the opportunity to educate the patient and determine the course of action that is in the patient's best interest.