Repairing the Healthcare System

Final ACO Rules

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

In the hope of getting more hospital systems and practices to participate in Accountable Care Organizations CMS has again changed the rules.

Below is a summary of the new rules.

1. “Regional benchmarks will replace national benchmarks.Cost benchmarks will now be based on regional spending data, as opposed to national spending data, when an ACO signs up for a second or subsequent contract period. ACO efficiency will be measured against other regional providers instead of against past performance.
2. Track 1 ACOs will have the option of renewing under a two-sided model.If the application for renewal is approved, the ACO can defer exposure to downside risk for one year before transitioning to Track 2 or Track 3.
3. Timeframes have been established for appealing calculations for shared savings or losses.ACOs will have four years to file an appeal.
4. The new methodology will be implemented in phases.It will begin with ACOs entering contract periods on or after January 1, 2017.”

 

The goal of CMS is to use the ACO model to move reimbursement from a fee for service model to a value-based model.

Health policy wonks got the idea that if you attach reimbursement to quality care you will get less expensive care.

The problem is it is not known how to measure the value of medical care in automated computerized terms. The government needs medical care to be measured in computerized terms so that value can be automatically determined and related to reimbursement. Reimbursement should be congruent to both medical and financial outcomes.

Many false assumptions are made in evaluating quality medical care. Many important elements of quality medical care are ignored.

Three of the most important elements of quality medical care are the patient-physician relationship, the patients owning the responsibility for their health, their adherence to the care recommended by their physician, and making sure they are responsible for their follow-up care.

The new rules also ignore a consideration of physicians’ medical judgment in evaluating quality medical care. Medical judgment is very important in the delivery quality medical care.

These three elements of quality medical care are difficult to measure on a computer in an ACO model. ACOs focus on best practices using evidence based medicine and documentation of appropriate testing and treatment. The goal is to reduce the cost of healthcare.

ACOs shift financial risk to physicians and hospitals. ACOs ignore the financial responsibility of patients and their performance in their self-care.

In the new rules the healthcare policy wonks got one thing right. They are trying to increase the financial incentives for physicians and hospitals to do a better job. However, the methods the measurements are wrong.   

So far there are only 433 Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs. There are 3000 hospital systems that should be participating in Obamacare’s ACO program.

Only 14% of the hospital systems are participating after 3 years.

There are many large physician practices that should be participating in the ACO program. The number of physician groups that would qualify for an ACO program is unknown.

Only 22 of the 433 ACOs are in the track 2 group. Track 2 shares in both the profit and the loss of the group at the end of a year. There are 411 in the track 1 group. These 97% only share in the profit and not in the loss.

In the new rules the government is attempting to move from a fee for service system to a value-based care system with physicians and not the government or insurance companies being at risk.

What are the problems with the new rules?

The government is trying to increase the incentives for everyone to accept financial risk for increased quality care using inaccurate and unproven quality measurements.

The government is trying to soften the blow by giving ACOs an optional 4^th year of staying on track 1 before being forced into tract 2. It doesn’t encourage the non participants to participate in the ACO program.

The changed rule does not encourage non-participating hospital systems and physician groups. The non-participants might not have the resources to participate.

The government believes benchmarking savings is the problem. In 2017 the government is changing to regional benchmarking in an attempt to encourage greater physician and hospital buy in and participation.

“The elephant in the room is not the benchmarking rule,” said Clif Gaus, CEO of the National Association of ACOs, a trade group run by hospitals and physician groups.

 

“It is: What is CMS going to do to improve the business model for the one-sided ACOs and provide a lower-risk track for the two-sided programs?”

 

The determination of bonuses and penalties has been difficult for CMS. There is a deep mistrust of government and new rules in the medical community. The government is now saying trust me it will work out.

Many have raised concerns that the CMS still is not doing enough to increase provider trust and ease providers fear into riskier ACO models.

“The government has basically gone all-in with the ACO as the vehicle to try and control fee-for-service, and they will continue to tinker with the regulations and the rules until they find something that works,” healthcare consultant Nathan Kaufman said.

 There was an inherent unfairness to the initial benchmarks the government set. It was based on the historical Medicare spending of a hospital system or practice.

Periodically the benchmarks were reset. Healthcare systems with higher costs and waste in the ACO system were more likely to share in the savings with the government than a more efficient system that had less potential for eliminating waste.

It also meant that at the next reset of the benchmark the newly improved healthcare system would have less chance of improving efficiency and therefore less chance of sharing savings with the government. In the track 2 of the ACO system, the hospital system would have more chance of having a penalty.

In other words the sharing system become a disincentive to improve because physician and hospital payment would decrease against a continuingly improving delivery of care.

The new rule sets regional benchmarks. In the long run it would have the same negative effect if everyone improved.

“ Some health systems have pulled out of the ACO programs in the past few years due to the lack of regional factors associated with bonuses.”

“The problem is so few ACOs have been able to generate the incentives to encourage physician participation,” Kaufman said.

Experts say the benchmarking changes will not fix an underlying problem. Most physicians and hospital systems are wary of the program's more aggressive tracks. They are afraid of facing sizable penalties if they don't contain costs as directed by the government and the healthcare insurance industry.

These providers are still are risk to keep patients healthy. It might be a risk that physicians understand are not under their control.

The risk of keeping patients healthy is under patients' control! They must follow the advise of their physicians.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2015 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

More ACOs Rules Will Mean More Problems For Obamacare

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

 June 11, 2016

I have written many articles on why I believe Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) will fail.

ACOs are critical to the success of Obamacare as are many the other programs introduced by the Affordable Care Act.

If one listens to the Obama administration’s propaganda about how wonderful Obamacare has been for the American public, one would be living in a dream world, not the real world.

Obamacare has failed on many levels. The administration believes the public will not remember the previous failures.

Here are the failed promises.

1. You can keep your doctor if you like your doctor.
2. You can keep your health insurance policy if you like your health insurance policy.
3. Each family will save $2500 dollars on healthcare each year.
4. Anyone making less than $250,000 a year will not pay one red      cent in new tax.

The failures of Obamacare

1. Obamacare will bend the healthcare cost curve. It bent the cost   curve for the first three years because Obamacare collected new taxes without providing healthcare services until 2014.
2. Thirty-two (32) states refused to expand Medicaid.
3. Twenty-two (22) of 50 states signed up to have state health insurance exchanges.
4. All of the states that developed state co-ops with federal loans are under water. Fourteen of the 22 are bankrupt now. All will be bankrupt by 2017 or 2018.
5. Private insurance enrollment though the federal health insurance exchanges has not increased for the last 3 years. Many of the buyers of health insurance exchange insurance have pre-existing illness. The health insurance exchanges are the only available insurance.
6. The hospital system and private practice meaningful use electronic medical records have not increased percentage wise as expected.
7. Worthless electronic medical records have increase at high costs to medical practices and hospital systems. These electronic medical records are providing some false big data information to the government and healthcare insurance industry to generate defective policy regulations. Hospital systems and physicians benefit little from the data generated.
8. Healthcare.gov is still not right after spending billions of dollars over budget.
9. Healthcare insurance premiums have skyrocketed for companies providing healthcare insurance to its employees.
10. Healthcare insurance premiums have skyrocketed for people buying healthcare insurance from the federal and the few remaining state health insurance exchanges.

The only success I have seen is in Medicaid enrollment for the poor and illegal immigrants. The access of care has not improved for tax paying people.

These are just a few of the Obamacare failures. The public would never remember there have been so many failures reading the propaganda and press releases that appear from the government in the traditional mass media.

The Obama administration’s information has blurred those failures. I sense the public does not want to know about the impending disaster in the healthcare system.

Many intelligent people ignore these facts. They keep reciting the administration’s talking points about Obamacare’s success.  

ACOs were supposed to lower healthcare costs. They were supposed to provide incentives for hospital groups and private practice groups to save money by providing more efficient medical care.

If these groups did lower the cost of care they would share in the savings along with the government.

There are many ways to achieve these savings and many measurements to determine these saving.

In short, ACOs were designed to shift the financial risk of care from the government to the physicians. If the physicians didn’t hit the benchmark they would lose money. The goal was also to shift to a flat rate payment for each illness from the individual fee for service based payment system.

Physicians will get paid a flat rate for a particular illness. It means that the risk for taking care of the illness at a particular cost shifts the financial burden to physicians and not the insurance company or the government.

The gigantic defect in the system is there is no burden on the consumer nor is there an incentive for consumers to be responsible for their health or healthcare dollars.

No risk is placed on the patient for compliance with treatment advice.

I have pointed out most of the defects in the ACO model in past blogs. ACOs are essentially an HMO on steroids. Hillary Clinton did not do too well in 1993 with the HMO model

ACOs do not address the problem of the high salaries of hospital administrators and healthcare insurance executives (who provide administrative services for the government). These salaries increase the cost of the healthcare system.

Last week CMS released another final rule intended to improve the way Medicare pays accountable care organizations (ACOs) in its Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP).

It is clear that if another final rule is made the last final rule is not working.

The hype of this new final rule is that the Obama administration has solved what many viewed as a critical flaw in the bonus structure for Medicare's accountable care organizations.

I think the new final rule might make ACOs fail completely.

CMS spokesman said, ”Physician buy-in is critical for the long-term sustainability of the ACO program, which could play an important role within Medicare's broader reforms to physician payments under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, or MACRA.

MACRA is another poorly designed program that makes payment for physician service more difficult to understand.

MACRA could inspire physicians to quit the whole ACO enterprise.

A group of executives on the MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) task force said,

“The goal is to force physicians and payers determine how to most effectively tie payment to performance and value.”

“A panel of healthcare experts and organizational leaders who began adapting to value-based payment years before the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act started fleshing out regulations talked about their programs at the event sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund.”

It is obvious to me that you cannot force anyone to do anything they do not want to do. You can only provide motivation and incentive for people to do what is best for themselves from their point of view.

MACRA will not get physician buy in because it will be too restrictive, arbitrary and controlling.

So far there are only 433 Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs. There are 3000 hospital systems that should be participating in the Obamacare’s ACO program.

Only 14% of the hospital systems are participating after 3 years.

There are many large physician practices that should be participating in the ACO program. The number of these groups are unknown.

The lack of participation is a result of the complexity of the ACOs, the inability to form a unified culture of physicians in a hospital system and the difficulty hospital systems have with pricing risk.

Pricing risk is the job of the healthcare insurance industry and not physicians or hospital systems.

The government wants to put that task on the shoulders of the physicians and hospitals.

There are two risk tracts for ACO. Tract one is called one-sided risk.

The ACO only shares in the savings and does not participate in the losses if they spend more than the benchmark costs.

Tract 2 is call two-sided risk. The ACO shares in the savings with a more generous bonus from Medicare than the bonus of the tract 1 participants but pays a penalty to Medicare if doesn’t save money or demonstrate high quality care.

Only 22 of the shared-savings 433 ACOs or 5% of the participating ACOs have chosen two-sided risk. The Obama administration’s goal is to have all 3000 hospital systems participate the two-sided risk model.

The participation rate is .7% participation rate for the 3,000 hospital system that should be participating. It is far short of the Obama administration’s goal.

I would not rate the ACO participation rate as a success after 3 years.

This absolute failure has not been acknowledged by the Obama administration or the Obamacare praise singing traditional mass media.

The new final regulations and MACRA will not fix this failure. It will only make the failure worse. I will discus both the new final rule and MACRA next time.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2015 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

More On Women’s Health, HRT And WHI

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was published in 2002. I presented a critique of the study in 2003. I gave a lecture in different parts of the country at that time debunking its statistical significance.

No one paid attention to the statistical results. The media was the message and the message has lasted despite good data refuting the message.

My last blog reviewed the lack of statistical significance of all the conclusions of the WHI study.

I published these thoughts once before in a 2007 blog post. I was stimulated to republish my comments last week because of two excellent lectures I heard at a recent American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) meeting reviewing the recent literature as to the value of estrogen replacement therapy in post-menopausal women.

Holly L Thacker M.D. presented “Women Getting Older-and Even Better”.

Dr. Thacker is the Director of the Center for Specialized Women's Health at Cleveland Clinic.

1. Mitchell Harman, M.D. presented “Hormonal Treatment of Menopausal Women: What Are The Data Telling Us (and Not Telling Us)?”

Hopefully these two presentations will help us move forward in getting to the truth about hormone replacement therapy in the post menopausal woman.

Neither presentation stated outright that the Women’s Health Initiative conclusions were invalid because of the fact that none of WHI conclusions were statistically significant.

However, several important new points were added to the discussion using the WHI’s own data. I will present the discussion.

First, I want to present an email exchange a reader had with a retired statistician about my last blog.

Mon, Jun 6, 2016,

 

S wrote:

R,

The blogger writing below is a now retired endocrinologist, academician and oft critic of ObamaCare.

In his post below he takes on many of the reports that were published based upon the WHI and related.

Passing it along to you FYI owing to his assertions as presented below.

 Perhaps instructive after all.
S

 

June 6.

Stan,

I sent your post on the flaws of WHI data and interpretation to a retired statistician for comments.

He applauds your evaluation and comments.  As do I.

FYI.
S

From: R
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2016
To: S
Subject: Re: FW: Repairing the Healthcare System

 

The points made are good ones.  The major point missed is that the study was done with horse piss estrogen, not human biologically identical estrogen which have been shown to produce none of the negative effects of horse derived estrogen.

None the less, the scientific criticism of the reported study are very accurate and very good.

R

In 2011 AZ LaCroix using the WHI’s own data analyzed the myocardial event risk. Women talking estrogen between ages 50-59 had less risk of having a myocardial infarction than women starting to take estrogen replacement therapy from age 60-69 and from age 70-79.

The WHI lumped conclusions lumps all three groups together in its analysis.

 

 

It is well known and accepted that the incidence of myocardial disease increases in women as they age and increases in post menopause to the same incidence as males.

The timing hypothesis for starting estrogen therapy was proposed as a result of this new interpretation of WHI data.

The effects of HRT on CVD are dependent upon time HRT is initiated relative to menopause and/or age (the “timing hypothesis”).

The upper two curves reflect the thickness in the carotid artery tested with ultrasound in women starting to take estradiol ten years after menopause. There is not a significant difference in the increase in intimal thickness between the placebo group and the treatment group (p==.029). Significant p values are 0.05 or less (i.e. 0.001).

Whereas the lower curves where estrogen started in less than 6 years post menopause the placebo thickness increased greater than the estradiol thickness for a very significant p value of 0.007.

This data reflect the influence of estrogen on vessels when taken shortly after the onset of menopause. The result presumes the protective effect of estrogen in post-menopausal women as opposed to the conclusions of the WHI.

I believe that WHI stimulated fright that estrogen causes breast cancer has been exaggerated. Only 4% of the causes of death in women are the result of breast cancer.

It is true the WHI was published in 2002. Prior to 2002 early detection of breast cancer with mammogram and treatment with surgery and chemotherapy was prevalent. It certainly resulted in a decrease in the incidence of death from breast cancer. Today the incidence of death from breast cancer might even be lower.

There is a sense that the breast cancer death rate might be even lower if estrogen is used immediately in postmenopausal women. There has been an 80% decrease in women being treated with hormone replacement immediately post menopause.

The goal should be to lower the death rate from breast cancer to zero.

The huge death rate from cardiac disease in women easily surpasses the death rate from breast cancer.

There is evidence that estrogen replacement might serve to lower the 4% death rate from breast cancer if given appropriately as opposed to the message that estrogen raises the breast cancer death rate as the WHI concluded.

Eliminating patients with Breast Cancer genetic makers from receiving estrogen replacement would lower the death rate even further.

The subgroups in the WHI Estrogen only arm were analysized in 2004. Please note that all subgroups at all the diseases catagories crossed 1 and is not statistically significant. Only the incidence of stroke in the 60 – 69 group did not cross 1.

Therefore none of the subgroups except the 60-69 stroke subgroup was statistically significant. However that group did not attain a hazards ratio above 2 required for it to be statistically significant.  

Importantly, the Breast Cancers subgroups all crossed 1 indicating there was no difference statistically significant between estrogen treated age groups and placebo age groups. It cannot be concluded from the WHI study that estrogen causes breast cancer.

Colditz,in the Nurses Health study did not use nominal confidence limits as did the WHI in its conclusions. Colditz considered all of the confounding variables such as age, age of menopause, BMI, hysterectomy or normal onset of menopause, BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol level, smoking, oral contraceptive use, and family history of cardiac disease, or breast cancer.

He used adjusted confidence limits required to be used with confounding variables.

The confidence interval for the occurrence of breast cancer in nurses currently using estrogen was 0.59- 1.00 and using estrogen in the past was 0.63-1.09 both touching or crossing 1. Therefore the results were not statistically significant.

The game changer after all the evidence that the WHI data was misinterpreted was the Danish study DOPS published in the British Medical Journal in 2012.

I have presented this data to my readers to ponder after I heard these two excellent reviews at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) meeting.

I wanted to point out once again that the media is the message. The media without proper peer review of data has changed the way women are treated post-menopausal forever.

Hopefully disseminating this data will help remove some of the emotional stigma that has influence the thinking and use of estrogen replacement therapy since 2002.

It might stimulate the medical profession, the government, the malpractice legal system and women to start re-thinking their recommendations and conclusions.

This is especially true when women are living longer and estrogen therapy can alleviate some of the emotional, and physical effects women suffer in menopause when estrogen is prescribed appropriately.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2015 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Women’s Health Initiative (WHI): Medical Community Is Waking Up

Stanley Feld M.D. FACP, MACE

The Women’s Health Initiative’s conclusions changed how peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women are treated in the U.S.  

The conclusions of the study were released to the media before the medical community had a chance to study or debate the findings.

Since the media is the message and damn the facts, it was clear that estrogen caused heart disease, breast cancer, stroke and pulmonary embolism when used in peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women.

The conclusions frightened every peri-menopausal and post menopausal woman in this country. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) usage has decreased by eighty percent since the WHI was published in 2002.

Women were afraid to take HRT because they were afraid to contract these deadly diseases.

Physicians were afraid to prescribe HRT because of the fear of being sued in our litigious society if their patient contracted one of these diseases.

In the years before the WHI, observational data supported the conclusion that estrogen was of great value in treating symptoms associated with the acute menopausal syndrome, namely hot flashes, vaginal dryness, urinary tract irritation, skin changes and emotional instability.

Estrogen also seemed to protect against heart disease, osteoporosis and weight gain and promote a general sense of well being in peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women. There was no good evidence for or against breast cancer.

One common complaint about observational studies is they are not double blind studies. One observes the outcome against a control group that does not have the same outcome.

"One common observational study is about the possible effect of a treatment on subjects, where the assignment of subjects into a treated group versus a control group is outside the control of the investigator.^[1][2] This is in contrast with experiments, such as randomized controlled trials, where each subject is randomly assigned to a treated group or a control group."

This NIH sponsored double blind placebo controlled study (WHI) was performed to prove with a level A (double blind placebo controlled) study to test the validity of observational data reports of the positive effects of estrogen.

The WHI reported results that concluded that estrogen had the opposite effects of previous observational studies.

The WHI conclusions were that conjugated estrogen caused breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary embolism. The WHI claimed that conjugated estrogen did protect against osteoporosis.

The media is the message and the conclusion resulted in the media frenzy. The implication was the medical profession was killing women by prescribing estrogen.

Prior to the release of the study’s conclusions many women were afraid to take estrogen on general principles alone. Many felt that estrogen deficiency was part of the aging process.

However, women had a life expectancy of 50 years in the early part of the 20th century. Women today live much longer and observational data suggests estrogen therapy (HRT) results in a healthier life.

There are many statistical problems with the WHI study. These problems have not been discussed in the media.

Practicing physicians were confused by the WHI study’s conclusions. They were also enraged because the results were released to the public before there was peer reviewed by the entire medical community.

Patients taking estrogen were upset at their physicians for giving them estrogen.

There are many defects in the WHI study from a statistical viewpoint.

1. Age Distribution: 66.6% of the patients were between 60 and 70 years old. 87% of the patients were 60 to 80 years old. The majority of the patients in the study receiving Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for the first time were at least 10 years post-menopausal. This age distribution does not represent the usual population starting HRT.

 

HRT is usually started just prior to the onset of menopause or at menopause (48 years old).

2. The drop out rate in the placebo and HRT group was 40%. The significance of the dropout rate was not addressed. This dropout rate nullifies the validity of statistical significance of all the conclusions in the study.

 

Maximal tolerable dropout rate for statistically significance of data in a study should not be greater than 20%.

Everyone had ignored this important statistical fact.

 

3. The unblinding of 3000 women in the study represents a departure from the protocol. It biased the findings of treatment difference.

 

4. A hazards ratio (HR) in a statistically significant conclusion should be greater than 2.0 in order for a conclusion to be valid. The Hazard Ration should not be expressed to two decimal places.

 

A Hazards Ratio of less than two does not discriminate causality from bias and confounding of variables.

5. A 40% drop out rate nullified the power of the study. The study was not sufficiently powered to yield statistically significant results.

 

6. Presenting data as a nominal confidence interval is valid only when one outcome is being studied against one placebo.

 

Adjusted confidence intervals must be used when multiple outcomes are involved that represent multiple confounding variables.

 

Confidence interval must not cross 1 to be statistically significant.

 

The WHI’s statistical conclusions of the WHI study were based on using nominal confidence intervals. The nominal confidence intervals were barely significant.

The WHI nominal confidence intervals came close to touching number one (1).

All of the WHI’s published adjusted confidence intervals were non significant because they all crossed 1.

These are the defects in the WHI study’s statistical analysis that invalidates its statistical significance.

The estimated Hazard Ratios (HRs), (Nominal 95% Confidence Intervals [Nom CIs] and Adjusted 95% Confidence Intervals [Adj CIs ) in the WHI study were as follows:

 

Cardiac Heart Disease: HR 1.29, Nom CI (1.02-1.63)                Adj CI 0.85-1.97.

Conclusion should have been the WHI was statistically insignificant for causing Cardiac Disease.

 

Breast cancer: HR 1.26, Nom CI(1.00-1.59),

Adj CI 0.83-1.92.

Conclusion should have been the WHI was statistically insignificant for causing Breast Cancer.

 

Stroke: HR 1.41, Nom CI (1.07-1.85)

Adj CI 0.86-2.31.

 

Conclusion should have been the WHI was statistically insignificant for causing Stroke.

 

Pulmonary Embolism: HR 2.13, Nom CI(1.39-3.25),

Adj CI 0.99-4.56.

The WHI conclusion for estrogen causing Pulmonary Embolism might be statistically significant if statistical analysis rules were not disregarded.

The Hazard Ratio (HR) was above 2. The Nominal Confidence limit (Nom Cl) did not go below 1. However it cannot be used for this study.

The Adjusted Confidence limit which must be used for this study crossed 1 making the WHI conclusion not statistically significant.

The adjusted confidence intervals were published in the original paper.

Media blitz publicity of the WHI’s invalid conclusions created a high level of public certainty about the results of the study.

Few physicians were in a position to dispute the statistical weakness of the data. Those who were in a position to dispute the statistical significance either remained silent or were marginalized.

The media blitz’ results changed the approach to women’s health in the U.S. in 2002. Eighty percent of women taking HRT discontinued estrogen replacement therapy.

In my opinion, the results have been a great disservice to women’s health. The media publicity also has had a devastating impact on the physician patient relationship and patients’ confidence in clinical research.

Even though estrogen might cause heart disease, pulmonary embolism, stroke, and breast cancer, the Women’s Health Initiative did not prove it in a statistically significant way.

Once again the media is the message.

Freedom of the press is vital to our freedom of speech, but the media’s tendency to sensationalize issues prior to proper judgment is disruptive to seeking the truth.

The medical community is starting to pick apart the conclusions of the WHI study.

I will describe some of the new and contradicting findings next time.

Dr. Joe Goldzieher, Reproductive Endocrinologist, helped me critique the statistics in 2002.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2015 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE