Root: Health

Unique Populations

A Unique Population
October 13, 2026
In the Circle of Change there is a category called unique populations. Often their challenges need more attention than they currently receive. Based on several articles, podcasts, and mainstream media, I would add Gen Z to this category. First some basics on “Zoomers” as a group. Generation Zer’s were born between 1997 and 2012. Their age range is from early teens to their late twenties....
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Let’s Make a Deal
October 28, 2025
I believe that saying what you think without self-censoring in order not to offend someone has never advanced a person’s sense of self. I also believe that people can respectfully disagree on important topics and remain colleagues and friends. Maybe one way to do this is to find commonality before simply discarding the other person. But, these days, that has been lost to righteously choosing a s...
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Another Neptune
May 1, 2025
It’s not an obsession, but I’m closer to the end of my life than I sometimes like to believe. Given this reality and how surreal it feels, taking care of one’s departure shouldn’t be left to our surviving families. In considering my own, I’d already ruled out the latest method – decomposing somewhere, then being planted in a forest, and quite literally pushing up daisies. And even thou...
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Ideas for Change
February 17, 2025
As Americans, we love our country, want the best for our families, a voice in deciding our future, and for elected officials to honor our needs and interests. After several stressful years, this is a bright moment when new Ideas could create the energy needed for important changes in our healthcare system. Following is the first in a series of Ideas gathered from a variety of sources. I’m...
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Rural America –Getting It Right
June 15, 2024
What’s In a Name? I hated the term “flyover country” long before I moved there and was curious about the phrase. It wasn’t meant to be the elitist slight it is now. In fact, according to Gabe Bullard writing in a 2016 National Geographic article, the term was first listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1980, influenced by the early non-stop, transcontinental commercial flights 30 year...
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Out of Sight
April 15, 2024
This post is dedicated to a dear friend and an amazing woman. Several months ago, upon the recommendation of a friend, I read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It’s not an easy book to read for two reasons. One is the postmodern vision Mitchell builds within linked stories – past, present, and future. “Like a series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes,” said Michael Chabon. The other reason is t...
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Aging Is Not for Sissies
August 1, 2022
In 2006, I was hired as the Community Coordinator for a multi-year foundation grant to determine what the elderly population of a Pacific Northwest county needed in order to make their lives better. The Partnership was divided into two phases. First, the Executive Director and I held public meetings to promote the project’s goals and to gather relevant data. While it was interesting to meet stat...
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How Was Justice Served?
March 15, 2023
In 2008, I had one of those I wonder whatever happened to moments and googled my blind-from-birth, mentor and former boss, Barry Scheur. My jaw dropped when I saw the headline in Modern Healthcare, dated December 05, 2005: “HMO dreams end in court. Barry Scheur began the Oath of Louisiana with big plans; now he stands accused of fraud after the HMO’s collapse.” Barry and several members of h...
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The Paradox
April 15, 2022
When I finished reading Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, I had mixed feelings. Could a UC Berkley sociology professor really shed her liberal leanings and give her study subjects a fair hearing? Curious at reader responses, I looked on Amazon and found some of the fiercest ratings I’ve ever seen. More about that later. Hochschild picked Louisiana because it...
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Nordic Know-How
April 1, 2022
Several years ago, I spent two weeks in Iceland, the first one in Reykjavik and the second in the far north. My friend and I stayed at an all-age, downtown hostel with a great bar and café. We met a lot of locals due to the amazing café cuisine. Most had been to the US – a kind of rite of passage like going to Disney Land/World for Americans. On our second week up north, we were in a snow bliz...
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OLD – Who Gets to Decide?
July 21, 2021
Recently, I’ve noticed that we’re back to being “totally amazed” that some movie star still looks great at 70. Wow! We’re treated to her “whatevers” and fabulous, age-less face. Men seem to get a polite pass and are called distinguished. The rest of us are going about our lives, wrinkles and all. I admit to being occasionally shocked when I glance in the mirror or see a recent photo....
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Social In-Security
October 15, 2020
We all face risks to our economic security throughout our lifetime including loss of wages, outliving one’s savings in retirement, and high health care costs at any age. In the US, we claim to meet these and other personal disasters through various social insurance programs – including the Social Security Act of 1935. According to various scholars, the Act was the “foundation on which modern...
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Old
September 30, 2019
The word "Old" is so laden with negativity, we hardly ever use it. Except, of course, if you really want to go for the jugular and then it’s usually accompanied by old fart, old bag, old dog with no new tricks, and possibly “old timer” but that is kind of dear and saved for men. Women aren’t afforded the same courtesy and become “cute or sweetie.” I stumbled into the current use of the...
more
Reworking the Workplace
November 15, 2019
I wish that when we talk about polarization we were only talking about how to protect polar bear habitats in the Arctic. But, alas, now the term’s most common meaning refers to the act of dividing, often people and opinions, into completely separate groups. We’ve gone binary in the U.S. This applies to today’s workplace as well and poses a significant challenge. Possibly for the first time i...
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Other Providers

Ideas for Change
February 17, 2025
As Americans, we love our country, want the best for our families, a voice in deciding our future, and for elected officials to honor our needs and interests. After several stressful years, this is a bright moment when new Ideas could create the energy needed for important changes in our healthcare system. Following is the first in a series of Ideas gathered from a variety of sources. I’m...
more
A Life-Changing Book
February 15, 2023
The first question you might ask is - Can a book really change your life? If you asked someone who has read and followed AA’s “Big Book” (written in 1939, printed in over 70 languages, and still considered AA’s basic text), they would say yes. That’s how I feel about The Myth of Normal. The book is 500 pages of intense, illuminating, crucial topics that make it, at times, a challenge to ...
more
Nordic Know-How
April 1, 2022
Several years ago, I spent two weeks in Iceland, the first one in Reykjavik and the second in the far north. My friend and I stayed at an all-age, downtown hostel with a great bar and café. We met a lot of locals due to the amazing café cuisine. Most had been to the US – a kind of rite of passage like going to Disney Land/World for Americans. On our second week up north, we were in a snow bliz...
more

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Hospitals

People’s Hospital
January 4, 2025
Setting aside specialized institutions like children, veteran, and mental health facilities, there are over 6,000 hospitals in the U.S. Let’s start with the nonprofits. This type of hospital qualifies as a charity according to the IRS and is not required to pay property, state, federal, income, or sales tax. In exchange for this significant benefit, nonprofit hospitals are required to re...
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Symptomology
September 29, 2020
As some of you know, I’m working on a hybrid—part memoir and part how to get us off our collective ass and provide affordable, accessible healthcare to our people. The biggest barrier is that all we read and talk about are the symptoms—not the disease. This is like hearing an odd noise coming from under the hood of your car. You drive to your regular automotive shop and the son of the boss w...
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Nurses

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Doctors

The Doctor Dilemma
October 1, 2026
“Medicine has always been hierarchical, but never has it been so conformist,” writes Dr. Aaron Kheriaty in his latest book, Making the Cut:  How to Heal Modern Medicine. He is the Director, Bioethics, Technology, and Human Flourishing Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center. “There are too many thoughtless physicians marching in lockstep to his metrics dictated by vested outside intere...
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Back to School
July 28, 2026
Despite the passage of time, the basic medical school curriculum hasn’t changed all that much. A person technically holds the academic title of an allopathic  doctor (MD) as soon as they graduate. However, to actually practice medicine and treat patients independently, they are legally required to complete a residency program, which typically takes anywhere from 3 to 7 years depending ...
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The Medicalization of Health
April 10, 2026
The way the human body is constructed, pairs of body parts are obvious. If you start at the top, we have two of most everything down to our two feet. The relationship between the pairs is also well documented. If you break a leg, the other one does double duty but both legs will need to heal – one from the break, the other from the overtime. These supportive relationships – shoulders, hands...
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What Would Hippocrates Think?
March 20, 2026
Turning the calendar back to the 5th century BCE, Hippocrates emerged as a leader in medical research and thought. Rather than turning to the gods as before, he is generally credited with using observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge. He turned his attention to changes in diet, beneficial drugs, and strategies to keep the body in balance. The Hippocratic Corpus— the collected wr...
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Hold That Pill
November 15, 2024
“If you think your doctors prescribe medications for you on the basis of their unbiased judgment and objective medical research, Carl Elliott’s book, White Coat – Black Hat, will disabuse you of that old-fashioned notion. In his superb exposé, Elliott shows how the big drug companies have bribed and corrupted the medical establishment so that we no longer know which drugs are effective or w...
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The Iron(y) Age
November 1, 2024
As we bid farewell to 2024, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the year was rich with irony. I often heard myself saying “how ironic.” In writing, there are three types of irony – verbal, situational, and dramatic. What I wondered as I started this post was - Is situational hypocrisy irony? Yes, according to several sources. There are situations where it is hypocritical for someo...
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The American Mendacity Association
October 15, 2024
After years of witnessing the demise of the American health care system, I’ve come to think of the American Medical Association as primarily a self-serving, duplicitous organization. I grew up thinking that it was almost a priestly sect that cared about health and healing. Ten years of working in the health insurance industry opened my eyes. Happily, the AMA’s membership is going down, not sim...
more
How One Man Shaped Medicine
August 1, 2024
In 1910, two of the richest men in America – Nelson D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie – hired Abraham Flexner to review medical institutions across North America. The two had questions regarding the quality of the medical teaching facilities in the US and Canada. Despite his non-medical background, focused solely on the classics, Abraham Flexner was chosen for his perceived objectivity. Unlik...
more
Medice cura te ipsum
January 15, 2024
“Physician, heal thyself” is a proverb that has been used in literary texts from at least the 6th century B.C. The moral of the proverb is that physicians should care for themselves in order to better care for the illnesses of others. Unfortunately for all of us, more and more doctors and nurses are doing just that - but by leaving the profession. And worse according to Wendell Potter of Healt...
more
Working for Something Better
December 15, 2024
Imagine kicking over a rotting log and finding all manner of centipedes running to escape the sunlight when darkness is their life. This is how I have come to view the healthcare industry we’re living with today. Just that, it’s become an industry rather than one of the elements committed to creating good health and promoting wellbeing. For more than a dozen years, beginning in 1982, I work...
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Mind Changing Events
May 1, 2024
1956 I was a sixth grader at Thomas Jefferson elementary school when our two sixth-grade teachers decided to hold a “presidential election” just like the grownups. The week before November 6th, we made patriotic themed art and learned about the role of voting in a democracy. At home, politics was a frequent topic. My father was an ardent Democrat; my Grandma Rosie said that “If Stevenson c...
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Down the Rabbit Hole
October 1, 2023
It’s Not Just for Rabbits A friend sent me an email several months ago suggesting her healthcare experience as a topic for a blog post. She was excited to find a Primary Care Clinic in her city that sounded perfect. They advertised, among many things, time to get to know you as a patient and a multi-team approach. She liked her doctor who looked at her mild osteopenia recorded in a DXA* scan, p...
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The New Canaries?
July 1, 2023
I couldn’t stop thinking about a short notice I read in my local newspaper and wanted to share this in a post. “Runaway youth in Washington State will now have the option to defer shelters and host homes from contacting their parents if they leave home to seek gender affirming or reproductive health care under Senate Bill 5599.” The state’s House and Senate passed the bill and sent it on ...
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Doctor, Doctor
May 1, 2023
According to a recent study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation of women ages 18-35, doctor visits aren’t always positive. More than 46% of women said that their health care provider did some of these things: dismissed their concerns, assumed something about them without asking, and blamed them for their health problems. Moving up the ages, menopause “received little attention in clinic...
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A Life-Changing Book
February 15, 2023
The first question you might ask is - Can a book really change your life? If you asked someone who has read and followed AA’s “Big Book” (written in 1939, printed in over 70 languages, and still considered AA’s basic text), they would say yes. That’s how I feel about The Myth of Normal. The book is 500 pages of intense, illuminating, crucial topics that make it, at times, a challenge to ...
more
The Catch-22 of US Healthcare
September 5, 2021
I worked in the health insurance industry from 1982 to 1989, with one regrettable relapse. My first job was with an HMO. I actually believed if we provided more preventive services and made care affordable, the health of all Americans would improve. Those were innocent days, before doctors’ practices were owned by venture capitalists, before medicine became Big Pharma, before insurance companies...
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Old
September 30, 2019
The word "Old" is so laden with negativity, we hardly ever use it. Except, of course, if you really want to go for the jugular and then it’s usually accompanied by old fart, old bag, old dog with no new tricks, and possibly “old timer” but that is kind of dear and saved for men. Women aren’t afforded the same courtesy and become “cute or sweetie.” I stumbled into the current use of the...
more
Symptomology
September 29, 2020
As some of you know, I’m working on a hybrid—part memoir and part how to get us off our collective ass and provide affordable, accessible healthcare to our people. The biggest barrier is that all we read and talk about are the symptoms—not the disease. This is like hearing an odd noise coming from under the hood of your car. You drive to your regular automotive shop and the son of the boss w...
more
“Question Authority” Returns
April 17, 2025
In the 1960s, Timothy Leary, a well-known figure of the counterculture,  popularized many catchphrases like the one above.  It’s message was meant to raise doubts about the Vietnam War among other issues. In 2024, according to Marty Markary, M.D. we need to once again reexamine our assumptions about some medical beliefs. In his most recent book, Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wr...
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Medical Schools

Back to School
July 28, 2026
Despite the passage of time, the basic medical school curriculum hasn’t changed all that much. A person technically holds the academic title of an allopathic  doctor (MD) as soon as they graduate. However, to actually practice medicine and treat patients independently, they are legally required to complete a residency program, which typically takes anywhere from 3 to 7 years depending ...
more
What Would Hippocrates Think?
March 20, 2026
Turning the calendar back to the 5th century BCE, Hippocrates emerged as a leader in medical research and thought. Rather than turning to the gods as before, he is generally credited with using observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge. He turned his attention to changes in diet, beneficial drugs, and strategies to keep the body in balance. The Hippocratic Corpus— the collected wr...
more
The American Mendacity Association
October 15, 2024
After years of witnessing the demise of the American health care system, I’ve come to think of the American Medical Association as primarily a self-serving, duplicitous organization. I grew up thinking that it was almost a priestly sect that cared about health and healing. Ten years of working in the health insurance industry opened my eyes. Happily, the AMA’s membership is going down, not sim...
more
How One Man Shaped Medicine
August 1, 2024
In 1910, two of the richest men in America – Nelson D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie – hired Abraham Flexner to review medical institutions across North America. The two had questions regarding the quality of the medical teaching facilities in the US and Canada. Despite his non-medical background, focused solely on the classics, Abraham Flexner was chosen for his perceived objectivity. Unlik...
more
Medice cura te ipsum
January 15, 2024
“Physician, heal thyself” is a proverb that has been used in literary texts from at least the 6th century B.C. The moral of the proverb is that physicians should care for themselves in order to better care for the illnesses of others. Unfortunately for all of us, more and more doctors and nurses are doing just that - but by leaving the profession. And worse according to Wendell Potter of Healt...
more
What Is a Whistleblower?
August 15, 2024
While the term whistleblower didn’t really make it into popular use until the 1970s, brave individuals have been reporting corruption and abuse for centuries. A current definition of a whistleblower is “An employee of an organization who reports abuse, fraud, corruption, and/or dangers to public health and safety. These individuals often have to turn to public reporting when internal reporting...
more
A Life-Changing Book
February 15, 2023
The first question you might ask is - Can a book really change your life? If you asked someone who has read and followed AA’s “Big Book” (written in 1939, printed in over 70 languages, and still considered AA’s basic text), they would say yes. That’s how I feel about The Myth of Normal. The book is 500 pages of intense, illuminating, crucial topics that make it, at times, a challenge to ...
more
Old
September 30, 2019
The word "Old" is so laden with negativity, we hardly ever use it. Except, of course, if you really want to go for the jugular and then it’s usually accompanied by old fart, old bag, old dog with no new tricks, and possibly “old timer” but that is kind of dear and saved for men. Women aren’t afforded the same courtesy and become “cute or sweetie.” I stumbled into the current use of the...
more