Academic general internist, writer on health disparities
I am an academic general internist and a former newspaper reporter. I am based in South Florida and my writing focuses on health disparities. My articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Huffington Post, and on the New America Media web page.
Florida's controversial Medicaid privatization program has made the system more difficult to navigate over the past decade, according to some patients and health advocates. Has the U.S. Supreme Court's ACA ruling given the state an opening to expand privatization further?
Physician-journalist Erin Marcus looks at what happens next when drug addicts drop their used syringes on the street. Are we and our children at risk from accidental needle sticks?
<p>Sometimes, the simplest tools in medicine are the ones that give us the most useful information. Take the humble blood pressure machine, for example. It's been around for years, and it's cheap, compared with a lot of other medical devices. It's simple to use, and it doesn't require a medical or a nursing degree to operate. But the numbers it reports are valuable in helping predict a person's risk of a host of medical problems, including heart failure, stroke and kidney failure, and can help doctors determine whether a person really needs to take medicine to control his or her high blood pressure.</p>
