10 Questions: Steven Nissen, MD
By Todd Neale
MedPage Today, December 5, 2013
What’s the biggest barrier to practicing medicine today? That’s just the first of 10 questions the MedPage Today staff is asking leading clinicians and researchers to get their personal views on their chosen profession. In this series we share their uncensored responses. Here, answers from Steven Nissen, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic.
There, Nissen is chair of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. A past president of the American College of Cardiology and former chair of the FDA’s Cardiovascular Renal Drugs Advisory Committee, he has had a leading role in highlighting potential risks associated with certain drugs, including rofecoxib (Vioxx) and rosiglitazone (Avandia). In 2007, Nissen was included on Time Magazine’s list of “100 men and women whose power, talent, or moral example is transforming the world.”
1. What’s the biggest barrier to your practicing medicine today?
The lack of a single-payer system. We waste enormous amounts of time and energy dealing with insurance companies, whose major goal is figuring out how not to cover patients.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PracticeManagement/PracticeManagement/43257
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D. A couple hundred thousand physicians are closet single payer supporters. If only we could get more of them to out themselves, as Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen has done here, maybe the public would understand that we really could have an improved Medicare for everyone since so many doctors agree.
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