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When Dr. Jeffery Ward, a cancer specialist, and his partners sold their private practice to the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, the hospital built them a new office suite 50 yards from the old place. The practice was bigger, but Dr. Ward saw the same patients and provided chemotherapy just like before. On the surface, nothing had changed but the setting. But there was one big difference. Treatments suddenly cost more, with higher co-payments for patients and higher bills for insurers. Because of quirks in the payment system, patients and their insurers pay hospitals and their doctors about twice what they pay independent oncologists for administering cancer treatments. (Kolata, 11/23)

You hear it so often it’s almost a cliché: The nation is facing a serious shortage of doctors, particularly doctors who practice primary care, in the coming years. But is that really the case? Many medical groups, led by the Association of American Medical Colleges, say there’s little doubt. 'We think the shortage is going to be close to 130,000 in the next 10 to 12 years,' says Atul Grover, the group’s chief public policy officer. But others, particularly health care economists, are less convinced. (Rovner, 11/24)

Dr. Oliver Korshin is a 71-year-old ophthalmologist in Anchorage – and he is not happy about the federal government’s plan to have all physicians use electronic medical records or face a Medicare penalty. A few months ago when he applied for an exemption to the latest requirement, he had to pick an exemption category that fit. "The only one that possibly applied to me was disaster," Korshin says. "So I picked disaster and I described my disaster as old age and I submitted as my supporting document a copy of my passport." (Feidt, 11/24)