It involves a combination of insurance and tort reforms, new transparency rules and incentives to encourage states to find solutions that enroll the uninsured while taking care of their own unique needs. Changing course right now may be politically ...

By NAOMI FREUNDLICH President Obama’s latest plan for health reform brought a flurry of commentary in the last two days; including divergent views on whether his commitment to "transparency" is helping or hurting the process. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times...

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When the President of the United States, allegedly possessed of the best bully pulpit in the free world, needs to go on the Super Bowl pre-game show to attract a big audience, you know that something has gone horribly, horribly...

Generally, transparency in government means that the public it serves knows who that government is.

Yet the "Office of the National Coordinator: Key Personnel" page at HHS shows only this, the name of the Coordinator himself, Dr. David Blumenthal:





What about the others as per the Org Chart?


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Just out from the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Center is a brief paper on "Approaches to teaching and learning about corruption in the health sector."  (Note that U4 has a very useful web-page on corruption health care, also now appearing in the links in our side-bar.)

The paper begins by describing the overall goals of such a course:

The overall goals for training in anti‑corruption in health are to help people develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they will need to identify and understand problems of corruption in health, design anti‑corruption strategies, strengthen health systems for good governance,
transparency, and accountability, and advocate for integrity in governance. An additional goal is to prepare people to respond to individual experiences they may have with corruption, such as how to react when they suspect someone has engaged in corruption, when they are asked
to pay or accept a bribe, or other situations.

Then it lists a set of learning objectives:

- Define corruption.
- Identify the types of corrupt activities that occur in the health sector, and their scope and seriousness.
- Explain why corruption occurs, applying principles of economics, governance, and crime prevention to understand the issues involved.
- Assess risks and vulnerabilities which make corruption more likely in certain settings.
- Identify the consequences which can result from corruption.
- Discuss cultural differences in defining morality and corruption, including the blurred line between corruption and trading favours, giving gifts, using contacts,

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Having said that, the biggest shift since the campaign (I feel) is that Obama isn't being truthful with us anymore. I elected him based on truth on transparency. If he would have come out and said "I don't want single payer, the public option, etc ...

Research Edge Managing Director Tom Tobin worries the Obama administration is failing to change 'business as usual' in Washington.

Uninsured patients in California are unable to successfully obtain information about the cost of medical care at hospitals despite recent state legislation intended to improve price transparency, according to a new study. Posing as low-income ...

athenahealth Chooses Monolith Software to Increase Transparency in ... CNNMoney.com (press release) "athenahealth prides itself on offering high levels of service performance to our physician practices, which must be able to access their patient records ...

...pricing health healthcare transparency cost medical 23 Web Sites to Help You Figure Out Health Care Prices - Health Blog - WSJ...

Vaccines: why we can't glibly dismiss "conspiracy theories" Westmeath Examiner The HSE - that wonderful bastion of efficient healthcare, transparency and accountability - will no doubt join with their political bosses in telling us ...

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In the past few weeks, there's been a wonderful convergence of discussions focused on core issues underlying our country's healthcare reform debates; these issues are: American values, personal responsibility, and pragmatic solutions for a sustainable healthcare system.

For example, in the past two weeks, the Hasting Center posted the following blogs:

• Values: The Beating Heart of Health Reform
  
• Personal Responsibility: Let's Go With Our Guts
  
• Thinking Collectively about Health Care

And the Health Affairs blog posted this: American Values And Health Reform
What's most exciting is that these issues go to very heart of who we are as a society, what we truly consider important as individuals, our level of spirituality, our degree of empathy and compassion, and our ability to think rationally/sensibly about the present and future. I've been writing extensively about such topics on this blog for over two years; following are some links and summaries:

• Personal Responsibility: A Thorny Issue in Healthcare Transformation – Explains why there's so much to consider when judging healthcare reform policies in terms of promoting personal responsibility.
  

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mccaskill: CBO score 'good news' but health bill needs work The Hill She added that she was fighting more "transparency" in the healthcare debate along with other centrist Democratic senators. and more »