We got a chance to interview Matt Miller as he began his congressional campaign. Dr. Todd and Matt Miller have a candid and unrehearsed conversation about health care in America. Dr. Todd sticks to his primary goal of trying to find out if a journalist, and potential future congressman, believes in the power of evidence based medicine to help reform our health care system. Find out if Matt Miller supports the concept of patients, doctors and policy makers saying “show me the evidence”.
Who is Matt Miller? He is a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, co-host and the voice of the political “center” on “Left, Right & Center,” public radio’s popular political week-in-review program, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Miller has written several best-selling books, and served as a senior advisor at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995. He is running for Congress and stopped in to speak with Doctor Evidence regarding his positions on health care, public health and using evidence to inform new policy making.
Our very own, Dr. Todd, interviewed Miller for an hour with an audience of over 40 persons in attendance. Matt was very supportive of the use of evidence as a way to simultaneously control spending and increase quality care for patients. “The fact that we spend twice per person on health care basically as every other wealthy nation on earth without better outcomes is one of the critical national problems we face,” Miller states.
How can evidence change health care? Dr. Todd suggests one solution: “Force the tort system to use evidence to determine causation and standard of care. Right now the system relies on testimonies from experts…It’s basically hired guns. The defense hires their guns and the plaintiffs hire their guns and see which side the jury believes. But if you actually used evidence to determine causation a lot of that wouldn’t go on…and the doctors who ordered the right treatments wouldn’t get in trouble and those that didn’t, would.”
Evidence based testimony would likely end “defensive medicine” (doctors ordering tests/treatments to stay out of court) which is a huge problem in our health care system today.
Dr. Todd and Miller go on to tackle numerous hot topics and questions from the audience. Check out highlights from the interview: