Montana has recently come into the forefront on the healthcare reform radar as their Senator Max Baucus, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee along with Chuck Grassley and others, has made healthcare reform one of their key agenda issues.
Baucus' advocacy for healthcare reform comes at a time when his state struggles with the financial reality which is putting healthcare coverage out of the reach of many Montana families. Montana is of course not alone. The healthcare crisis is playing out in most if not all states in the US, and the number of uninsured or underinsured, especially in rural America continues to grow.

A recent article by Deb Courson of the Public News Service reports that in Montana, a state with a median annual wage of $22,000, the average annual premium for family coverage is $12,000.

If so, I'll take your bet every day including Holidays. The nonsense surrounding Wal-Mart's entry into health care vise vie eCW sold through Sam's Club is interesting to watch. (See Everyday Low Prices? More Views on the Wal-Mart EMR News posted on NextThingsFirst)

Very simply put, how many initiatives has Wal-Mart historically launched that were a failure?

P.S. Jay Cutler is a punk!

Thank God baseball season is back! Like a lot of our physician members I begin counting the days to Spring Ball the minute the last pitch of the World Series was tossed in October. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration....but I am a huge fan of the game.

Now, if you combine America's love of baseball with it's obsession over the iPhone computing platform, you get some really slick baseball apps. Enter the newest app from Zumobi...a "Microsoft spin-out" according to John Cook. Read about the new app on his post: Hey, batter, batter:' Zumobi creates MLB iPhone app .

If you love the subtleties of baseball, the constant chess game and statistical analysis, then iPhone baseball apps are a must for you.

The wave of provider institutions banning industry interactions of most types continues with the recent move at Johns Hopkins. The Wall Street Journal blog post Johns Hopkins Bans Free Drug Samples, Gifts from Industry covers the latest move.

I'd like to hear from providers including our members from Johns Hopkins. Send me a comment or email and let me know what you think. I know from talking to many of you that there is little consensus on this issue.

The New York Times article Doctors Are Opting Out of Medicare highlights two important trends "Two trends are converging: there is a shortage of internists nationally -- the American College of Physicians, the organization for internists, estimates that by 2025 there will be 35,000 to 45,000 fewer than the population needs -- and internists are increasingly unwilling to accept new Medicare patients."

The article goes on to discuss concierge medicine as an alternative.

KevinMD has some thoughts to add in his post: Once you hit Medicare age, good luck finding a doctor

Yes...it's true! Despite the annual show of technology force that is HIMMS...actual adoption in IT is severely lagging...just ask NextThingsFirst posting about the NYT article Health Care Industry Moves Slowly Onto The Internet.

I came across a well-written piece from the Heritage Foundation posted last week entitled: Single Payer: Why Government-Run Health Care Will Harm Both Patients and Doctors. Anyone interested in the arguments for and against single payer health care or increasing government involvement ought to give this a read. The article does a decent, albeit cursory, job of representing the impact to physicians.

Regardless of whether or not you think single payer health care is the answer, there is no arguing the fact that the role of the federal government in the system continues to rise...we should at least form an accurate picture of what we're asking for in advance of getting it.

I hope everyone is enjoying this incredible golf weekend! The Masters Tournament is of course one of my favorite times of the year. Take a few of these Masters' quizzes I posted and see how well you know your stuff. Or if you're interested in learning something new, here are 75 things to know about the Masters. Let me know what you think about the players so far - any surprises? Disappointments? Final predictions? Login and start a new discussion. Those of us in the iMedExchange Golf Club would love to hear what you think!

Myself (representing iMedExchange) and several peers (Peter Gelpi, Clarity Health Services; Rob Coppedge, Faultline Ventures) created innovateHealth to foster connectivity and visibility amongst the growing numbers of innovative health care organizations in the Northwest. As I have posted previously, the reception has been nothing less than avid and we are taking the next event to a new level with our May 12th Capital Summit. Davis Wright Tremaine, one of the nation's leading law firms with an extremely strong health care team has also become an integral part of innovateHealth out of the gate.

Today, David Chase posted a nice piece in the Seattle PI introducing the organization.

As reported on Beaker's Blog post titled: Ready, Willing... and I have a prescription for Able Pfizer pulled a promotion in Ireland in which physicians were being sent boxer shorts with the Viagra logo embedded.

I agree that this is harmless and the reaction is just one more example of how political correctness is totally out of control these days. What do you think?

Jay Parkinson may be one of the best new media self-promoters around and he went off in his Business Insider article entitled Google Health Will Belly Flop. While I am not prepared to argue or defend Jay's position on Google's approach to the personal health record, he is certainly good at stirring up the conversation...and that's half the battle.

In related news, the company Jay is involved with, Myca Health, will officially launch at the Health 2.0 conference in Boston April 22 and 23.

Despite the fact that no one should take the rankings of schools...medical or otherwise, but the likes of with too much seriousness...they do. The 2009 rankings have just been released and the University of Washington, UNC, Oregon Health & Science, University of Colorado Denver and UCSF are the top 5 ranked programs for training primary care physicians. When it comes to research institutions, Harvard and Johns Hopkins are #1 and #2 respectively.

Click HERE to review the rankings.

If you haven't visited your medical school alumni group on iMedExchange, get take a second and do so now.

Thanks to Kevin Erwin for sending me a link to the Time.com article entitled The New Internet Start-Up Boom: Get Rich Slow. I have been meaning to write a post highlighting this article for several weeks because I couldn't agree more with its thesis.

Everyone knows the motto "buy low, sell high." And yet, most people do the opposite. We buy more real estate, stock etc when things are "booming" and we sell when things seems to be going South. This precise madness is why most people don't make squat on their investments and why most people think this is a terrible time to be starting a new venture. I am going to list 5 basic reasons why there is no better time to jump-start a new venture.

1. Commercial rents are dropping. Lease costs can be a significant line-item for an early stage business and they are lower now than in anytime in recent memory...and dropping more every month. Buy inventory (square footage) when it's cheap.

Kudos to Mayo Clinic for embracing social media in a comprehensive way. Check out their own recap: 10 Ways You Can Use Mayo Clinic's Social Media Tools.

They were featured earlier on this Good Morning America Spot.

The Disaster Medicine Group on iMedExchange has 2 updates on swine flu cases today, and links to useful resources including a pandemic influenza risk/cost calculator, flu tracker, and educational employee video. Interested physicians can login now to access these resources, share your thoughts, and ask questions. (The Disaster Medicine Group is dedicated to the evolving medical sub-speciality of disaster medsicine. Disaster medicine is a multi-disciplinary, disaster management discipline mandated by Homeland Security Presidential Directive-21.(HSPD-21)).

The UK BBC News website is running a worthwhile diary of Guadalupe and Arturo...doctors working in the Mexico City area, battling swine flu and talking about how it affects the health community. Guadalupe works in cardiology and her husband works in the emergency services.

Swine flu: Doctors' diary

Dr. Kreuger and other members of iMedExchange are doing a great job of disseminating information and engaging in rational dialog about preparedness and other surrounding issues.