Health Insurance Exchange Decisions…So Far!
But in this partisan world, not all states are going ahead with the idea of creating these exchanges. The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff has a nice summary, in one simple picture, of where things stand:
Sepsis is a brutal killer. It often starts after a microorganism gets loose in your bloodstream, spreading to organs far and wide, releasing deadly toxins along the way. In response, your body releases toxins of its own, chemicals designed to kill the invading organism but that, all too often, damage your body, too, leaving you…
In a recent post, I wrote about ethnic variation in the likelihood of going without health insurance. There’s also quite a bit of geographic variation in uninsurance, based on 2008 data – before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Here is a picture showing the percentage of people in the continental United States who…
There’s lots to love about American healthcare. We have some of the best clinicians in the world, as evidenced by the huge number of people who come to the U.S. from other countries when they are sick. Yet the American people are less satisfied with their healthcare system than are citizens of the majority of…
Is a test that costs $800,000 to add one year of life worthwhile? In one survey, most physicians said yes-evidence that controlling costs will require overcoming very powerful, and irrational, psychological forces. Imagine for a moment that you are in charge of the U.S. health care system, and must decide whether to pay for a…
Biologic drugs are a big deal for the pharmaceutical industry right now. Blockbuster chemicals for common conditions like diabetes and hypertension are largely things of the past. We’re getting pretty good at controlling those conditions, and few people expect a slew of major scientific breakthroughs that will lead to many more multibillion dollar treatments for…
A new report out of Massachusetts concludes that people there are paying more for their health insurance, at the same time that the services covered by their insurance are declining. Here’s a picture from a Kaiser summary of the report: The Kaiser story also points out that a big problem in Massachusetts is that people…