Message to ISM/FoSiM: this is what Real contributions to the Healthcare Reform debate look like.

[Post moved to other blog.]

Atul Gawande's piece in the New Yorker on "Big Medicine: Can Hospital Chains Improve the Medical Industry?" is a tour de force on the issues, benchmarks, solutions and challenges facing us in the current Healthcare Reform debate.

At 9,500 words, while it was a riveting read for me, it may be a tad long for many people.

Even if you only read a page or two, you'll be well rewarded.

This is the work of an insightful, competent and engaged (Medical) Professional who is actively looking to mend the US Medical system and has taken considerable time and effort to construct a readable and informed piece to bring the issues, challenges of Real World change to Healthcare to the general public and even posits some solution.

Generally, I was impressed that Gawande didn't invoke Aviation as his Gold Standard, but used people and places the general public know and visit everyday and indeed, many will have worked for, and the majority will personally know someone who works in them.

He quietly and unobtrusively lets us know that he's done a bunch of real journalistic research to write this piece, pounding the pavements, spending hours or days with people in their workplace and asking tough questions.

 This was a carefully planned, researched and executed piece, possibly months in the making. It would've taken a few weeks to edit down and polish into this relaxed, chatty style.

He ends with:

The critical question is how soon that sort of quality and cost control
will be available to patients everywhere across the country.
We’ve let health-care systems provide us with the equivalent of
greasy-spoon fare at four-star prices, and the results have been ruinous.
The Cheesecake Factory model represents our best prospect for change.
Some will see danger in this.
Many will see hope.
And that’s probably the way it should be.

It's not a rant or tirade, it can't be mistaken for "personal attack" nor does it need a naive disclaimer like FoSiM's ("If you misunderstand what we've written, that's your problem, not ours.")

To Dwyer and his little Friends in FoSim, this is what a real contribution to the healthcare Reform debate by a competent Professional/Journalist looks like.

Compare and Contrast to the vapid, vitriolic and self-righeous outpouring of Ms Marron, your unpaid "CEO".

It'd be unkind to say that she remains unpaid because nobody with money would pay for her efforts, though it may be accurate.
Fanaticism and Zealotry in a cause, as demonstrated by FoSiM, don't make for persuasive journalism.