Scandal! Is Obama the first president to publish an article in a scientific journal?

Before he was president, Herbert Hoover published a textbook, "The Principles of Mining", and, together with his wife, Lou, published a scholarly translation of Agricola's "De re metallica".

So, people in the 18th century didn't know what the letter "s" looks like? :)

Irony of ironies, I let my subscription to JAMA lapse not long ago.

President Obama's article is very likely to be "not liberal enough" for me. I strongly favor true universal single payer health care coverage. I realize that some rich countries have a different approach to universal health care coverage, but what many people forget is that we already have the Medicare system. It pays something on the order of 40% of medical bills, depending on how you measure, and is well accepted by patients and physicians. Why no work with what is already working? President Obama's ACA is very close to what the AMA was once recommending, and that's no coincidence, as the "make everyone have private, for profit insurance, by hook or by crook" compromise is enticing to some. My main problem with that approach is that health insurance executives provide no social benefit. I don't think taxpayers or consumers should be obliged to pay the salaries of profit-taking middle men who add no value (I feel the same way about taxpayer and consumer funding of "charter schools").

Having said that, though, I greatly appreciate having had a serious and thoughtful president for the last eight years. It hasn't been an easy time, and I must say that the racism unmasked by the election of the first black president was an unpleasant surprise for me. But the Obama administration has seen the country through these times without major war or severe economic collapse, with incremental improvement in many areas. President Obama's administration has been remarkably free of personal scandal compared to prior administrations, and his family life is an example that all Americans can look up to. He will certainly be remembered as a strong, capable president who endured difficult times and unfair criticism with dignity. I only hope whoever follows can live up to his example.

TomS said: Before he was president, Herbert Hoover published a textbook, "The Principles of Mining", and, together with his wife, Lou, published a scholarly translation of Agricola's "De re metallica".

Since when was the Canadian PM cool? Its always from those who agree with their political values and policies and so is not a true account. Its a total fraud for the media to celebrate the Canadian PM.
Health care reform doesn't count as a intellectual study of science. I think the big media is exclusively liberal and unrepresentative of America or Canada.
Seems that way forever now.

Robert Byers said: Since when was the Canadian PM cool? Its always from those who agree with their political values and policies and so is not a true account. Its a total fraud for the media to celebrate the Canadian PM. Health care reform doesn't count as a intellectual study of science. I think the big media is exclusively liberal and unrepresentative of America or Canada. Seems that way forever now.

The timing is very interesting. On the verge of the next election, Obama lays out his plans for the future. If a Democrat is elected, they might be able to follow through and move the plan along. If a Republican is elected it will probably all go away, but at least we will know what we could have had instead of what we will be getting. At least Obama did what he could. In fact, he accomplished much more than many who came before him. Hopefully this will be his legacy.

DS said: The timing is very interesting. On the verge of the next election, Obama lays out his plans for the future. If a Democrat is elected, they might be able to follow through and move the plan along. If a Republican is elected it will probably all go away, but at least we will know what we could have had instead of what we will be getting. At least Obama did what he could. In fact, he accomplished much more than many who came before him. Hopefully this will be his legacy.

harold said: I'm a mild opponent of the AMA.

I can't add much except agreement with harold's long comment. Is anyone seriously doubting that Obama is qualified to write about health care reform? I find that pretty shocking--and kind of new low in insinuations that Obama's clear competence and intelligence is somehow fraudulent.

It would be unusual if Obama was publishing a research paper in a medical journal, but this is policy analysis. ACA has been the key domestic policy initiative of Obama's two-term tenure, and one he fought harder to keep than anyone probably imagined. I would hope that anyone holding office as president could understand statistics at the level needed to understand the few, simple charts in this paper. It is totally appropriate, and should not even raise eyebrows.

W. H. Heydt said:

harold said: I'm a mild opponent of the AMA.

Interesting slip, since I think you mean the ACA (that is, "Obamacare" rather than the American Medical assoc.).

PaulBC said:

W. H. Heydt said:

harold said: I'm a mild opponent of the AMA.

Interesting slip, since I think you mean the ACA (that is, "Obamacare" rather than the American Medical assoc.).

Heh, I actually thought harold meant "AMA". I respect doctors greatly, but their lobby group isn't always on the side of the angels. JAMA is their publication, right?

While I generally commend Obama for trying, the ACA was implemented with a fatal flaw, and very few people seem at all awake to this, including Obama, even in retrospect, let alone before hand. Fundamentally the ACA placed the burden of cost for a high risk group, those excluded from affordable coverage, often due to preexisting conditions, on to the backs of those in the private individual insurance market. It is true that subsidies, for all individuals in that market, to the degree they are entitled by the law, was socialized across all tax payers, but the cost of policies in that market was socialized only across that market. This was idiotic. Why should those of us in that relatively small market (cr 13M out of a population of 350M) be saddled with spiraling premiums because our pool got a disproportion fraction of expensive patients? In the last few years, plenty of articles have lamented that premium costs have increased more than expected because patients with ACA policies have rung up more costs, but no published article I've found has pointed out that the real problem with those premium costs was due to restricting those increased costs to such a relatively small pool. Those costs would have been much easier to handle if normalized across all health insured individuals, not just the small private individual market.

Of course some fraction went on Medicare, and some fraction would be passed on to group plans via employment, but this does not change the fundamental fact that a very disproportionate fraction of those needing coverage that the ACA enabled got lumped into the private individual health insurance market, and those of us who were already in that market for whatever reason, consequently got well reamed by the entirely predictable results. Yet either none of the highly paid "experts" who helped craft the law, nor Obama, appeared to understand this, or perhaps alternately, they simply decided that reaming a small fraction of the population for the benefit of others was fine. The number of individuals paying their own way in the private market is likely well below 10M, so as a voting block, not large. My own insurance premium for roughly the same sort of coverage has gone up a factor of 3x courtesy of the ACA, and unfortunately since my income is just about the upper cutoff (60K/yr for a couple of college educated people is rather modest BTW), I've felt the full brunt of this disastrous policy implemented by clueless people.