On the blogs: patients Googling doctors, doctors Googling lawyers, healthcare law through teen eyes

On Kevin, M.D., Dr. Kevin Pho offers a primer on protecting one's Google reputation.

"There is no doubt that patients and potential employers will Google you as an initial screen. It is to your benefit to ensure that favorable stories come up when your name is entered as a search term."

On Flea, the Boston-area pediatrician shares a thing or two he has learned by Googling the plaintiff's attorney in the malpractice trial in which he will be testifying. (Doesn't he think they read blogs?)

"What patients hope for and expect from malpractice litigation is 'compensation, explanation, and a safer healthcare system,'" he quotes from a presentation by the lawyer he found. "Flea's adversary could have stopped with compensation. As we said before, if a patient wants an explanation, he can acquire it much less expensively than a lawsuit: He can ask the doctor."

On WBUR's CommonHealth, Nancy Turnbull of the Harvard School of Public Health answers her teen-age nephew's objections to the Massachusetts healthcare law, from the name "Commonwealth Choice," when individuals are required to get coverage, to vegans paying for the ills of meat-eaters.

"I know you think it’s an infringement on individual rights that the state is telling people that they have to buy health insurance," writes Turnbull, who also is president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.. "That type of attitude comes from your father’s side of the family —- he hates wearing his seatbelt too."