Is it me or does it seem like lately, everything I’ve written about has been another complicated, hard to understand part of America’s healthcare system? Well, get ready for one more—the part intellectual property plays in keeping you and me healthy.

It’s spring, and for some it means the onslaught of allergies and their unappreciated symptoms. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about a quarter of America’s adults suffer from allergies.

It’s National Minority Health Month which for me generated the question, why do we need a Minority Health Month? What has caused the disparity of care that requires us to focus on the access and level of healthcare the minority population receives.

I had the honor last week to attend the American Society on Aging’s yearly conference in San Francisco where I renewed friendships with old (I mean previous) friends and had the opportunity to meet and make friends with the new champions of America’s older population.

On Thursday, March 21st, Seniors Speak Out held its first Facebook Live event of 2024. It was a conversation with Sue Peschin, the President and CEO of the Alliance for Aging Research, where we discussed ongoing and expected federal healthcare policies and developments and their impact on seniors’ access.

I’ve grown up with a love of cars and learned to repair them from a young age. I started out by helping my father change the oil in the car and progressed to maintaining my own cars in high school. I was always intrigued by the way the different parts of the engine and transmission worked together to get sustained power to the wheels.

I sat through the State of the Union (SOTU) speech, and it raised many more questions for me than answers. I remember back when this speech was a chance for the President to offer solutions to the country’s problems and would use the platform to bring both sides together around those solutions.

A provision of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that could impact the discovery of new small molecule medicines needs to be fixed. The bipartisan Ensuring Pathways to Innovative Cures (EPIC) Act is just the law to accomplish this important fix.

I’ve often written about the dangers of letting the government insert itself too deep into our healthcare. It’s not because our government is evil −it’s because the goals of government are not always aligned with those of the people it governs.

In earlier blogs I’ve urged people to contact their lawmakers to tell them how they feel about proposed legislation or other rules that affect them. It’s no secret that lawmakers are interested in what you think because you vote.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing last Wednesday on the price of prescription drugs.

Heart-healthy means adopting a lifestyle that helps reduce the risk of heart disease. We’ve all heard the standard instructions doctors give to people that have suffered heart problems.

Many of my blogs have talked about how perverse incentives have driven parts of the healthcare process away from serving the patient and toward serving and rewarding other participants in the process.

January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month and, as I said last January, glaucoma is the secret sight-stealing disease.

The yearly extravaganza called CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is the place where the new computer run devices and the accompanying software are revealed. It is held each year in Las Vegas Neveda.

It seems to me that the older I get the more things I don’t understand. This is not a new phenomenon; I think every generation since the beginning of time has felt this way, but it seems that things change so fast that it’s tough to understand how these new things will affect my life.

This has been a banner year for changes to our healthcare. We began the year by trying to return to our pre COVID status, and it hasn’t been easy.

One of the greatest attributes of the Constitution is its reliance on checks and balances that spread the power to run our country among the three branches.

That great intuitive saying was muttered by the underappreciated, hall of fame baseball player Yogi Berra as he sought to communicate the unique aspect of baseball that allowed a baseball team to score multiple runs as long as they didn’t make the third out in the ninth inning.

Last week marked the end of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Patient-Focused Listening Sessions.