Welcome

Welcome

Dear All,

I am starting this blog to reserve a spot for my numerous thoughts. Instead of boring my wife with hour long political discussion, I have turned to the internet to have a broader discussion and to keep my marriage in tact.

For the next few months my focus is health insurance reform. I am a member of PNHP(Physicians for a National Health Program pnhp.org) and have had a very fulfilling career as a Family Physician. Along the way I have been certified in Family Practice 5 times, earned an MPH in Maternal Child Health, and was boarded in Geriatrics as well as Pediatrics. I served on numerous local hospital committees, established and became chairman of the Winchester Hospital Family Practice Department. I served on the North Shore Health Planning Council in the 80s, had a stint as Chairman of the Board of Health in Reading, Ma. I have also been active in local Democratic politics. I have visited with health information experts at Beth Israel Hospital(Dr. Halamka), spoken with legislative offices on health care issues(Sen Richard Moore and Sen Tolman), and I have met with my personal rep to Congress, John Tierney. I designed and developed a functioning EMR for my office and have upgraded it with help from a software developer. It is now also a part of one of my colleague's office. This is the expertise and experience I bring to the discussion. Oh I've also been a patient having undergone 2 major surgeries in the past 10 years.

The Rules of the Blog: No global terms like right and left. Let's hear the ideas. We want to promote discussion, not destroy it. Conservative and liberal are OK if you mean by Conservative a traditionalist who wants any change, if any, to come slowly. Liberal is OK if you mean someone ready to test out completely new ideas and desires more dramatic change. The conversation is then what do you want to keep and why and the flip side, what do you want to change and why. Profanity is OK if you're really that upset or overwhelmed. Anything you write should be backed up from reasonably reputable sources. If others don't think they are, they certainly are free to refute what has been cited.

So all this boils down to how you think about health care. Is it a commodity that is a global necessity for existence? Is this a privilege reserved for those who can afford it? Can anyone accurately predict what their health care needs will be from year to year? Words such as competition and choice do not operate in the same way in this sphere as it does with other things we buy. So let's start here and see what you have to say on the nature of health care. How do you want to be treated and how do we get there? Dr. Donald Green

Mindlessness VS Mindfulness

This is the key issue.  Do we run our lives like some old movie or do we evaluate our experiences with some of our god given intellect.   It seems a large swath of the population wants to wander through life without questioning if there are better options.  According to Dr. Langer, a Harvard pyschologist, our well being is dependent on our ability to think.  Mindlessness is deadly.