Federalizing Medicaid

Here is a new post I’ve got up at the Health Care Cost Monitor, in which I try to convince folks that even Republicans should be in favor of federalizing Medicaid. I’d love your feedback, as I’m still developing this idea.

Here is a new post I’ve got up at the Health Care Cost Monitor, in which I try to convince folks that even Republicans should be in favor of federalizing Medicaid. I’d love your feedback, as I’m still developing this idea.
See this Fayetteville Observer story about a disturbing new type of doctor’s office, called an express care center. And in the process of reading the article, you’ll see my take on the relevance of gas stations for understanding our insane health care system. (Click here to view comments)
Confused about whether you will need to buy health insurance under the Obamacare mandate? Here is a chart from the Kaiser Foundation Family website that helps you sort things through: (Click here to view comments)
Getting your appendix out can cost between $2,000 and $180,000. Hip replacements run from $10,000 to more than $100,000. Hospitals, we have also learned, frequently mark up the price of cotton swabs and routine X-rays by 300 or 400 percent, with most patients oblivious to the reason their health care bills are so large. As a response to…
I teach an undergraduate health policy class at Duke, populated in part by ambitious premeds. (Sorry for that last bit of redundancy.) One of the things I like to emphasize in the class is the kind of medical practice milieu students can expect to encounter when they finally become physicians. That’s a good way to…
Irena Bucci was receiving follow-up care after delivering her second baby when the obstetrician discovered a problem with her kidneys. “My creatinine was rising,” creatinine being a waste product normally cleared out of the bloodstream by healthy kidneys, “and my doctor didn’t know why. I didn’t have high blood pressure or diabetes,” two diseases that…
Jennifer spends lots of time with dead things, dead humans actually. She works in a pathology lab. One night, she is asked to incinerate a fresh human cadaver, and she is struck that it would be a waste to throw away perfectly good meat. So, even though she is against killing and is a vegetarian for moral reasons, she…