Since Ancient Greece, a guiding principle of Western medicine has been paternalism the idea that doctors have intrinsically superior insights, patients should defer to their edicts, and this asymmetry is a desirable state of affairs. In the 20th century, new medical knowledge and technologies...

America's health care policy debate has long been framed as Left versus Right, Democrat versus Republican, federal versus state, and public versus private. This paper offers an alternative demarcation: Fortress versus Frontier. Health care is mostly in the Fortress, meaning that public policy...

The FDA s system for regulating medical devices has been criticized for retarding innovation because it adds uncertainty and costs to the invention process and delays the approval of devices. Because this system was created 40 years ago, it does not reflect societal changes in information...

Electronic health records (EHRs) are widely perceived as having great potential for improving the quality of healthcare and diminishing the costs of that care. Present-day EHRs, however, are widely perceived as disappointing. Many doctors consider them time- and money-wasting nuisances that...

The current system of healthcare licensure contributes to the high cost of and impaired access to medical care. Politics plays a perverse role in maintaining the status quo and prevents the healthcare workforce from adapting to the evolving needs and rapid technological advances of the 21st...

The FDA’s system for regulating medical devices has been criticized for retarding innovation because it adds uncertainty and costs to the invention process and delays the approval of devices. Because this system was created 40 years ago, it does not reflect societal changes in information...

The Healthcare Openness and Access Project (HOAP) is a collection of state-by- state comparative data on the flexibility and discretion US patients and providers have in managing healthcare. HOAP combines these data to produce 37 indicators of openness and accessibility. In turn, these...

For most of its history, commercial aviation has tended toward large airplanes, large airports, and rigidly scheduled flights. Now, however, two phenomena—technological innovation and long-term societal changes accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—are creating an environment in which many...