A great cartoon from the Kaiser Health News website that pithily captures the “wonders” of the American health insurance system.
I’ll get right to the dismal data: Americans are dying from poison at an alarming rate. In 2005, death by poison in the U.S. occurred in about 11 of every 100,000 people over age 15. By 2016, that number had more than doubled, to 24. Any guesses at what could explain this horrific statistic? (To…
Recent news reports have excitedly announced that healthcare inflation seems to be under control. In 2012, for example the cost of health insurance premiums rose only 4% for a typical American family, a paltry figure compared to the almost 10% annual increases experienced a decade or so ago. But just how good is this good news? Look…
Physician reimbursement increasingly depends upon measures of healthcare quality. Physicians who fall short on quality measures now face financial penalties. But it might be quality measures, themselves, that are falling short, according to a study conducted by the American College Physicians. The study involved a panel of people with expertise in evidence-based medicine. Panelists were asked…
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…
To almost every claim that the American healthcare system is overpriced, defenders of the United States can point to the comparison problem—it is not fair to compare American surgeons, or hospitals, to our peers in Europe when American surgeons and hospitals are not the same as in those other countries. Our surgeons are better trained,…
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…