Gender vs Sex
Mark McDonald MD Psych
#HealthIsNumberOne #HINO
10am ET Sat. Feb 28, 2026
@WWDB_AM_860 @MMcDonaldMD
http://HealthIsNumberOne.com
Is there an epidemic of Autism, is it finally being recognized more by clinicians and treated…or are some fraudsters gaming the safety net system at the expense of taking resources away from those who really need them? The recent Data Dump @SamirUnni has discussed on @DRsLoungePod is raising some legit questions.
Dr. Bowden is amazing, and I've been reading about the TMB's surreal persecution of her for ~a year. Therefore I was most interested in hearing the POV of the doctors of the Lounge on the situation. Every comment was very interesting and insightful, and I learned a lot.
[Incidentally I have followed TX politics a long time. Cruz and Abbott are 2 of the most useless Republicans anywhere--and that field is crowded and brutal]
I was a little nervous about doing this interview… three doctors not within my trusted circle…. But it went very well and hope it reaches some of my haters. Thank you @DRsLoungePod for having me on!
Regardless of whether you agreed with @MaryBowdenMD what @anish_koka writes is sound analysis. Medicine remains an art with far too much gray to approach things the way we did during COVID- which in many ways was the ultimate unknown we struggled to understand early on. Courage is standing for your convictions to help your patients. More physicians should consider @MaryBowdenMD to be heroic even if they vehemently disagreed with her conclusions. Science is rarely if ever settled and we always have a moving target to help our patients. Respect
Dr. Bowden (@MaryBowdenMD) entered the @DRsLoungePod to talk about her battle with local hospitals and the Texas Medical Board.
The health systems operate like a mafia because there are virtually no levers physicians have to deploy on their behalf.
You have to be willing to lose it all (your ability to practice medicine) unless you back down, pay the fine, agree to “retraining” and walk away with your tail between your legs.
Keep your head down, don’t say anything, and return to your comfortable life is the motto of most physicians.
To the physicians that tut tut about “that’s not how it’s done” - emergency privileges were being granted across the country to any MD with a pulse (research general cardiologist went to NYC to manage vented COVID pneumonia patients) .. and doctors with the accepted social causes routinely criticize health systems publicly.
Dr. Bowden was targeted because she was trying to prescribe a relatively benign medication that was not approved by the establishment. She also opposed vaccine mandates at a time that was incredibly unpopular.
I guarantee you a research cardiologist who hasn’t managed a vent since training is far more dangerous to a vented Covid pneumonia patient than ivermectin. Disagreements about works/doesnt work happen all the time. We should give very wide latitude to physicians to practice as they choose. The medical boards exist to protect their patients from doctors that want to administer cyanide or amputate the healthy limbs of children.. and they do a horrid job of that - focusing on the specifics of ivermectin and privileges (that she believed she had been granted) is completely missing the point.
Bravo to Dr. Bowden for fighting when everyone else wilts away.
5 years ago it was just me and my office manager with a big vision. 2 weeks in our receptionist quit on Super Bowl Sunday and I was greeting patients at the door myself 😂 But here we are - FIVE YEARS of >@SpineMedLI! Celebrated last week with the amazing people who made it all possible. Grateful doesn’t cover it. 🙏🎉
This new New York Health Commissioner - Seem like all New Yorkers will get a fair shake from him?
My pick for surgeon general.
@MartyMakary is correct. FDA has the right personnel at @FDACBER
Dr. Bowden (@MaryBowdenMD) on her fight with Houston Methodist and the Texas Medical Board.
https://x.com/anish_koka/status/2027203529543180427?s=20
Pinned: Talking to the amazing @MaryBowdenMD on @DRsLoungePod : the origin story..
The Doctors Lounge - Jason Locasale (Duke,Harvard,MIT alum) on problems in academia. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1MJgNgNERDwGL
The more I learn about this soldier, more I love him. It’s because of men like him, we are free and can sleep easy at night. The way his wife looks at him tells you a lot about the man he is. The way he looks at her, tells you how much he loves her and that she’s a big reason for his success. What a special couple and example for us all.
Vivek Murthy : the former surgeon general.
Today on @DRsLoungePod 9pm EST live we have superstar doctor @MaryBowdenMD
Apparently you actually can fight a multibillion dollar health system and come out on top. Much respect.
🔥
we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.
####
today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.
first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.
we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.
i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.
a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.
we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.
to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.
to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.
jack
I’ve seen more movement in this year alone compared to the last 4 years👌🏽
I was honored to share the stage with Mises heavy hitters! GKS @FreeMarketMed
Epic will roll out this unusable tool and all hospital systems will say "we don't need to buy a separate AI summary tool, Epic has one!"
The woman screaming at @JeffFlake in this viral video from 2018 during the Kavanaugh hearings is Ana María Archila
Zohran Mamdani just named her commissioner of the Mayor's Office of International Affairs for New York City
On cardiac calcium scores that are recommended ubiquitously:
I have sent dozens of FOIAs to Texas Tech to get records about my medical school dismissal since October. Instead of providing the records, Texas tech has filed hundreds of pages of briefs to the Texas Attorney General requesting to withhold the documents.
If I was dismissed from medical school for the reasons they claim, why won't they just provide the records? The records should confirm the official story, and we'd be done. I'd just be embarrassed and slink away in shame, and that'd be it.
One thing I know from the records I have been able to obtain is that they are explosive. So I want more. And as a resident in the state of Texas, I have that right. Texas taxpayers, at a taxpayer-funded institution, also have the right to know what is happening at Texas Tech, how the school is run, and whether it retaliated against a student for their (true) speech about how the COVID response was mishandled.
Something I haven't talked about is that I was open to working with the administration when all of this was going on. That is shown in many documents and recordings. The only conclusion that I can draw is that it was not enough that I should be silenced: Texas Tech decided to make an example out of me.
But I say: the facts should speak for themselves. They should be public. Not the official documents. The internal ones. The Texas taxpayer has the right to see how the sausage is really made. That's Texas law.
Child, 4, arrived alone for heart surgery. His doctor became his mom. https://wapo.st/4aRWBwO
R to @anish_koka: open.substack.com/pub/benrya…
Ben Ryan @benryanwriter actually obtained @CaseyMeansMD evaluations from her surgical residency.
She was in good standing , and her superiors spoke well of her.
Reminder that most of what you’re reading is just noise.
Read his Substack (link in reply)
Last week—after it became clear that Harvard was not serious about settling with the United States—@CivilRights went to court to enforce our right to review Harvard’s admissions data.
@TheJusticeDept will not let schools refuse to cooperate with our federal civil rights laws!
There is so much waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid-financed home health and personal care services everywhere, but in New York, it is off the charts.
https://paragoninstitute.org/paragon-pic/new-yorks-per-capita-home-health-aide-workforce-is-three-times-greater-than-other-states-average/
The ACA mandated that insurance cover more services, that people could not receive pricing discounts for being healthy or engaging in healthy behaviors, and that massively subsidized insurers selling the product.
So, unsurprisingly, premiums went through the roof..
What's amazing is some of these people are prominent academics, and yet they still behave like that.
Well as ortho surgeon who providers DME and had to go through this process, not sure how the fraud is occurring. We had to have Medicare come to our office and make sure we were a legitimate business. Is someone rubber stamping these in CMS for some reason?
Stopping new licenses doesn’t seem like the right answer as could harm access for seniors. Again, I bet a couple of us seasoned private practice docs could help solve this for the gov
The United States of America is a generous country and we take care of our own. It's disgraceful that fraudsters out there are taking advantage of programs like Medicaid. That stops today. @DrOzCMS
The Nurses Health Study is only partly funded by the NIH. Private philanthropic organizations partially fund the NHS.
Just so I have the rules right : If you are partially correct - you are a misinformation spreader, a liar or both ?
Asking for a friend.
This @TheJusticeDept just settled with an IT company that used AI-generated job advertisements to exclude U.S. workers from certain jobs.
Whether it is an employee, a recruiter, or an AI tool, @CivilRights will hold employers liable when they engage in illegal discrimination!
Do people realize that Medicare’s payment formula penalizes doctors for being efficient?
The amount doctors get paid for every office visit and procedure is calculated by “time, effort, judgement, skill, and stress” taken for the procedure.
So if innovation makes a procedure quicker, safer, easier, or simpler, the doctors will get paid less.
Yet another example of central planning killing innovation.
God knows there’s plenty of derangement on Twitter but I’ve never seen anything that comes close to the homicidal derangement of Bluesky responses to J Singal’s careful research into the horrifying scandal of pediatric gender medicine. It’s like it needs its own DSM category
AI is going to be great for small practices navigating the complexities of claims getting paid.
Third party payment for outpatient (non-procedural) care is still long term a losing proposition.