Day Two of Sotomayor Hearings
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Questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor begins today. We speak with Kristina Moore, who is blogging from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room for Scotusblog.com.
Business Guru’s Prescription for Healthcare
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Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter’s “Five Forces Analysis” is required reading in the business world. It helps strategists decide which industries are ripe for investment. Now Porter is turning his attention to reforming healthcare. His cure for includes: universal healthcare; requiring insurers to reveal how healthy their subscribers are; paying doctors based on the overall health of a patient instead of for each procedure; and getting several doctors – from primary care to specialists – to work together in an integrated practice, turning a patient’s care into a team approach.
Facebook vs. Google
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Facebook hopes to take on Google to become the next king of the internet mountain. While Google now dwarves Facebook in revenue and traffic, Facebook has something Google doesn’t: information on its 200 million Facebook users. The social networking company is hoping to use that information to create a web 2.0 search engine that will rival Google. Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine is our guest.
Charles Taylor War Crimes Trial
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor testifies at the International Criminal Court on July 14, 2009 (AP)
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor took the stand in his own defense at his war crimes trial at The Hague today, telling judges the case against him was built on lies and misinformation. He is charged with murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers and spreading terror during Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war. Taylor, who was educated in the Boston area and once escaped from a Massachusetts jail, is the first African leader to stand trial for war crimes. We speak to the BBC’s World Affairs Correspondent Adam Mynott, who is covering the trial. Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender also joins us to talk about Taylor’s escape from jail.
Jazz musician Grace Kelly
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Though saxophone phenom Grace Kelly is only 17, she’s already released 5 albums. She plays alto, tenor and soprano saxophone, writes and arranges music, and sings. We reprise a conversation we had with the multi-talented Grace Kelly last year.
Music from the Show
- Air, “Mike Mills”
- Freddie Hubbard, “Little Sunflower”
- Tito Puente, “Royal T”
- Radiohead, “Morning Bell”
- Massive Attack, “Future Proof”
- The Wee Trio, “Flint”
- Ahmad Jamal, “Patterns”
- Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnston, and Don Raye, “I’ll Remember April,” performed by Grace Kelly & band
- Grace Kelly “But Life Goes On,” performed by Grace Kelly & band
- Grace Kelly “Filosophical Flying Fish,” performed by Grace Kelly
- Grace Kelly “Every Road I Walked,” performed by Grace Kelly & band
- Grace Kelly “Every Road I Walked,” performed by Grace Kelly and the Boston Pops
- Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnston, and Don Raye, “I’ll Remember April,” performed by Phil Woods with Grace Kelly
- John Lennon and Paul McCartney “I Will,” performed by Grace Kelly and band
- Grace Kelly, “Happy Theme Song,” performed by Grace Kelly
Re: Michael Porter’s Prescription for Healthcare.
As someone with a background in Quality Management, I’m glad to hear discussion on how to better measure and manage our healthcare system. However, as someone with a chronic, debilitating, and incurable illness, Porter’s suggestion to measure doctors based on overall patient health really scares me. Where would this system leave the millions of people like myself who have chronic illnesses which are difficult to diagnose, have no cure, and few effective treatments? Doctors are already reluctant to take on patients like us because our cases are complex and require extra effort. If doctors were measured based on patient health, chronically ill patients would have an even harder time getting the care we need.
Let’s be cautious in developing new systems to make sure we don’t invent new problems that are even worse than our current ones.
Sue Jackson
Posted by Suzan Jackson, on July 14th, 2009 at 1:05 pmDelaware
Robin:
Posted by Rocco Dellarso, on July 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pmI have been listening to Here and Now for some time and think you are great in the way you hanle your interviews. I have enjoyed so many of your interviews. However, I had to stop and take the time to thank you for talking to that wonderful sax player, Grace Kelly. Be sure I am going to buy some of CDs.
Thank you.
Rocco Dellarso
Mr. Porter’s suggestions are interesting, but there are a few problems.
1) “Require everyone to buy insurance”
Who is going to police it? In most states everyone is required to purchase some form of auto insurance. Yet I read repeatedly of people who buy insurance just before their plates expire, get their plates, then let the policies lapse. Until these people have an accident (or in this case, show up at the doctor) no one knows they’re not actually insured.
2) What Mr. Porter describes – preventative care, “wellness”, etc. – sounds markedly like an HMO.
Remember HMOs?
3) As mentioned above, chronic diseases don’t match Mr. Porter’s “One disease, one fee” paradigm.
Even as he suggests a set fee for treating, for example, diabetes, he doesn’t allow for the fact that one patient’s treatment may not work for the next.
4) Multiple bills
I don’t know where Mr. Porter gets his notion that a patient (and/or his/her insurance carrier) gets a separate statement from each person or department involved in a diagnosis/treatment. I am, unfortunately, familiar with the “cancer” example he cited. I get two statements – a professional services statement for the doctors’ services and a hospital statement for labs/treatments.
5) Preventative medicine
Posted by Richard Cole, on July 14th, 2009 at 4:44 pmWhy are people going to start going to doctors when they don’t ‘feel sick”? It isn’t only a matter of “insurance”. Except for a few hypochondriacs – and I suppose I lack hard evidence here – people don’t go to their doctor, except for “annual” physicals, until they are symptomatic. Maybe Mr. Porter should do a study of how frequently serious conditions are discovered while treating minor events.
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