Because of Obamacare, more Americans have healthcare insurance and therefore more people are able to pay for medical care when they receive it. As a result, there has been a $5.7 billion drop in uncompensated hospital care just in those states that, per Obamacare, expanded Medicaid eligibility:
What would you like first: the good news or the bad news? Let me start with the bad. Life expectancy among patients in the U.S. with thyroid cancer lags behind that in Korea. In fact, the vast majority of patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Korea are cured of that illness, a statement I can’t…
When asked what enemies she was proud to have made during her political career, Hillary Clinton mentioned, in order, “the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies [and] the Iranians.” Pretty villainous company to place healthcare industries into. But Clinton is not alone among presidential candidates in vilifying pharmaceutical and insurance industries for, as…
It’s not an easy time to be a small, rural hospital. Insurance companies aren’t willing to pay generously for your services, given your measly market share. You are increasingly forced to compete against large integrated healthcare systems – conglomerations of urban, suburban and rural providers armed with big marketing budgets and specialized (generously reimbursed!) services….
The Managing Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine interviewed me about the piece I wrote, with David Comerford and Eric Johnson, on redesigning the health insurance exchanges. For those of you with long commutes, here is that podcast: Healthcare.gov 3.0
The HPV vaccine saves lives. It does so by reducing a person’s chance of being infected by the human papilloma virus, a virus that causes a whole range of cancers including, most importantly, cervical cancer. Vaccinate your teenage daughter against HPV, and you will increase the chance she will live to old age. Simple as…
I am going to be writing about chronic pain: diagnosis, treatment, mistreatment, etc, in upcoming posts. In my first post, i describe part of my own pain journey. The post is here. And it starts with me standing “in the back of the conference hall panicked that I was going blind.”