Awesome event, every minute of it.

Health care rentiers are eating your raises. We’ve got solutions: single payer, public production of pharmaceuticals, enforce laws against corporate practice of medicine. Time to stop pretending this is hopelessly complicated. www.wsj.com/health/healt...

You don’t realize just how bad the shortage of primary care doctors has become until you move and look for a new one. Yes, we are accepting new patients, I heard with relief today. But, the receptionist continued, the first appointment available is August 2027.

The evil is boundless www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/u...

This is courage. youtu.be/X7hRVAH3gQA

if you need hope from someone who actually deserves to inspire it, check out @abdulelsayed.bsky.social, a doctor who lives up to what medicine should be about: an insistence that all lives are worthy. Oh, and he’s running to be a U.S. Senator from Michigan. youtu.be/xhS6_Xoz09g

1/n Presidents of 5 Universities in Israel call on Israeli government to take action against famine in Gaza, mention the holocaust as an obligation to prevent indiscriminate harm to innocents, use the term 'crimes against humanity'. Lt - original letter in Hebrew Rt - my translation to English

Rhode Island passed solid legislation this year on medical debt. Previously one of nation's worst ion medical debt protections. Now the state outlaws wage garnishment for medical debt, capped interest rates on repayment, and banned credit reporting. www.insidearm.com/news/0009373...

Anyone who votes for this reconciliation can never claim to care about medical debt. States that expanded Medicaid after the ACA saw a 50 percent decrease in medical debt. By kicking over 10 million off Medicaid, this bill will reverse many of those gains. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

At a conference in Oslo last week, a medical student from Gaza showed photos of the textbooks she had to burn to cook amid bombardment. For more on medicine in Gaza, read emergency physician Clayton Dalton in the New Yorker. The ending is gut-wrenching: www.newyorker.com/newsletter/t...

One of my most inspiring teachers during residency is in the midst of a 25 hour long protest against Medicaid cuts. When I went to visit him at midnight he was surrounded by ED colleagues coming off of shifts. These are people worth following. turnto10.com/news/local/e...

The destruction of USAID is the betrayal of a devotion to dignity that crossed party lines. I wrote about the human and spiritual toll in America Magazine: www.americamagazine.org/politics-soc...

For the @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, I wrote about three recent books by @victorroy.bsky.social, Colleen Grogan, and Gardiner Harris and the conquest of medicine by financial logics. lareviewofbooks.org/article/medi...

This is awesome. Was he really like this? lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

No one in a major newspaper is documenting the mass murder that Trump is committing better than @stephanienolen.bsky.social. This could be reversed in a moment. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/h...

I’d been waiting to read this Hochschild book, maybe because it seemed even more dismal than his others (loved them all), but it is time. www.goodreads.com/book/show/60...

This is the best explanation I’ve heard of what is happening in higher ed, and what is to come (also, the Boston Globe’s reporting and analysis are just awesome right now): www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/07/m...

Remember when the WH insisted that global HIV prevention & treatment was exempt from the freeze? When it seemed MAYBE they understood that cutting off medicine could put the entire planet at risk of drug resistant HIV strains? Wrong. Elon Musk’s interns were simply shutting payments off manually.

Absolute comic book villainy here. Bono used to talk about “ending stupid deaths.” This administration is just hell-bent on maximizing them. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/h...

Listening in on this mass organizing call -- Cori Bush currently on the line buildtheresistance.org/BuildingOn50...

Trevor Noah’s podcast is really good

There is literally HIV being transmitted from mom to baby because of the illegal shutdown of US AID and now Trump’s State Department wants to spend 400 million dollars on Tesla cyber trucks. This is not about efficiency. It’s a smash and grab.

Today, @lookheron.bsky.social argues that, if we are lucky, a left-liberal coalition may soon have the chance to build new and better institutions out of the wreckage. However, unless policy scholars work on developing relatively detailed proposals now, we will squander this opportunity.

In Stellenbosch a decade ago, my wife and I stayed in a B&B on a street of gated homes with private security. A few miles away were huge shantytowns; the cooks and cleaners boarded buses there each morning. The owner complained he was “too male, too pale” to make it in South Africa.

Those talented lawyers who chose public interest over corporate law are having their moment. One of the orgs filing successful lawsuits against Trump’s illegal actions is the Public Citizen Litigation Group, an arm of the group founded by Ralph Nader in the 70s. www.citizen.org/about/staff/...

Seems like an effective thing to do now, if you’ve got the means, is to donate to groups filing lawsuits to defend us from Trump’s illegal actions. Groups like Democracy Forward, who halted (for now) the federal spending freeze and mass firings. democracyforward.org

Today’s top story on the debt collector listserv I follow. The stop work order at CFPB (which published incredible reports on medical debt and took action to limit its harms) is a joy to the industry, though the industry worries state regulators will fill the void www.insidearm.com/news/0009277...

This is so good. How North Carolina’s plan to fight medical debt became reality, in the face of hospital lobby opposition. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

This is just straight up mass murder. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/h...

This would be a disaster. I just voted for Sen Whitehouse for reeelection as my Senator. A vote to confirm RFK jr would raise the risk of so many needless deaths. Vaccines are one of the greatest advances in human history. Any senator who won’t vote to defend them does not deserve our trust.

PEPFAR is one of the most successful global health programs ever It provides HIV treatment for 20 million people And now it faces a funding delay of up to 6 months Without access to treatment, HIV can rebound in less than a month. This is self-defeating stupidity. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/u...

How can we translate momentum to cancel #MedicalDebt into efforts that prevent debt in the first place? Join us and @RacePowerPolicy on Tuesday, January 28 for a conversation on "Envisioning an End to Medical Debt." Learn more and RSVP: racepowerpolicy.org/event/arpa-i...

Can’t wait for this one

We worked with Dollar For to show the huge range of income cutoffs and other reqs for charity care at nonprofit hospitals. Some hospitals offer no free care at all, others offer free care to a family of 4 making $180k. Higher cutoffs in richer areas. www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/...