Yesterday’s woman doctor
I graduated high school in 1962 and spent my youth in mid-century America in the 1950s. I went to the Catholic grammar school in a neighborhood on the southside of Chicago, a middle-class neighborhood that saw generations of the same families raising their families, something akin to a small town in the larger city of […]
Reading Room Rules
Over the five years that I have been writing Perspectives and/or Editorials for the Bulletin, I often have been asked by physician friends from where I get my ideas for my columns. My long medical career, that spans nearly 60 years (including medical school), has allowed me to see the many aspects of our profession. […]
The end of balance billing?
The federal No Surprises Act (the Act), which was signed into law Dec. 27, 2020, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, ensured that all Americans had protection from surprise medical billing/balance billing when using out-of-network providers or facilities under certain circumstances. On July 1, 2021, the Biden administration released a series of […]
COVID-19 updates: Boosters and variants
As we enter a new era of the COVID-19 pandemic, the benefits of a vaccine booster at this time remain uncertain. The mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) usually result in creating high antibody titers for at least six months in immunocompetent hosts. After that, it appears that the antibody titer may start to wane. However, […]
Name-calling
Since the dawn of time, once humans acquired the gift of speech, they have felt the need to name everything and everyone in their immediate world. While doing research for an Osher course I am teaching on ancient historians, I learned that the Romans used three names for most people. The first was the praenomen […]
Vigilance
When I was a child, my summers were spent in a magical land by the sea in the care of my grandmother and uncle. At that time, the city was known as Bombay, and we lived in a flat in a seaside suburb of Old Bombay. The sun beat down hard on the stone and […]
COVID-19 Vaccines: What Can You Ask? What Can You Require? What Can You Disclose?
As we emerge from the worst pandemic in a century, businesses and employers are struggling with issues involving the rapidly developed vaccines that have begun to sharply curb the spread of COVID-19. These vaccines, offered by Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, have been granted emergency use authorizations (EUAs) from the Food and Drug Administration […]
Sartorial choices
“The dress code is at least business casual. Make sure that your earrings aren’t too big, and your makeup is not too loud.” These were the instructions I received from a young production assistant during a mandatory audio-visual check. I was presenting as an expert at a virtual national medical conference – and I was […]
Medical practices face liability for COVID Accelerated and Advance Payments and PPP loan fraud enfor
Introduction The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced last month that it will begin recovering payments from all Medicare providers and suppliers who requested and received COVID-19 Accelerated and Advanced Payments (CAAPs) from CMS during the COVID Public Health Emergency (PHE). Those repayments could have begun as early as March 30, 2021, depending […]
Dr. Seuss cancelled – who’s next?
In a moment of cynical excess a few months ago, I speculated that Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss would be the next victims of the cancellation/bowdlerizing culture. Then, like millions of parents and grandparents worldwide, I was shocked and disappointed when Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it would cease publication of six of his picture books […]