Contents tagged with policy
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Physician of the Day disclosure form
Physician of the Day
Disclosure form
Only family physicians with a valid unrestricted Texas medical license and who are members in good standing in TAFP or TOMA may participate in the Physician … more
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TAFP releases multi-page policy brief on scope of practice
TAFP releases multi-page policy brief on scope of practice
posted 02.17.11
The first of its kind, your Academy has published a policy brief titled, “The Question of Independent Diagnosis and … more
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Bending the cost curve
Now comes the hard part
By Tom Banning
TAFP Chief Executive Officer/Executive Vice PresidentIf one accepts the premise that politics drives health care policy, then it would follow that flawed politics produces flawed policy. Those hoping for a vigorous and thoughtful debate on health care reform—what works and how to pay for it—are instead forced to settle for media theatrics and hyperbole that come dangerously close to the level of UFO conspiracies.
The town hall debacles and orchestrated lunacy during the August recess have dispelled any lingering hope that Congress can move away from the partisan bickering and sniping that has increasingly characterized what passes for debate in one of the world’s greatest deliberative bodies. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, with the blessing and encouragement of their caucus’ political consultants, talk not in terms of medical economics and policy options for improving our health care system, but rather in calculated polling and focus-group-generated strategies designed to fire up their respective political base and confuse and scare the public to meet their own political objectives.
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Health care politics 101
By Tom Banning
TAFP Chief Executive Officer/Executive Vice PresidentAt the risk of sounding overly cynical, epiphanies in politics are rare, if they exist at all. Ground-breaking legislative reforms are more likely to evolve from several years of toiling in the political trenches. Even then, legislative breakthroughs may be a result of sheer unanticipated luck, stumbling by an opponent, an inadvertent absence of a determined adversary, or the weird and largely unplanned alignment of mutual interests, as politics makes strange bedfellows.
Legislative reform is by definition a reactionary sport. Reforms typically occur after, not before, the proverbial train wreck, plane crash, biblical storm or financial meltdown. Health care reform is no different and in many respects will be much more difficult to achieve, as reformers are attempting to transform the system before it collapses.
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It's the system, stupid
By Tom Banning
TAFP Chief Executive Officer/Executive Vice PresidentHealth system reform—with the emphasis on the system, not the players in the system—is on the political precipice. In my previous column, I discussed how policymakers, patients, physicians and those paying for health care are so fed up with our floundering health care system that fundamental, systemic change is inevitable.
The good news is that among the policy experts who count and vote, there is a broad, evidence-based consensus that economic recovery and health care economics are inextricably linked. Every report accumulating on politicians’ desks, in their minds and perhaps in their hearts declares the restoration of primary care as fundamental to health system reform.
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