Here, from the Financial Times, is a picture showing that the lower your income, the less increase you’ve gotten in life-expectancy the last four decades:
Income inequality is one of the largest human problems of this century.
We probably have a shortage of physician in the U.S., especially primary care providers. Our population is rising faster than the number of docs. But we don’t seem to be suffering from a shortage of healthcare administrators: Oh in addition, doesn’t look too convincing that all those administrators are finding ways to reduce healthcare spending….
Here is a Kaiser Health News/NPR story on our research on healthcare cost conversations in doctor’s offices. Talking about money is never easy. But when doctors are reluctant to talk about medical costs, patients’ health can be undermined. A study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs explores the opportunities that are often missed in the exam room. Patients…
Elizabeth Warren describes medical bills as “the leading cause of personal bankruptcy” in the United States. She bases that opinion in part on her own research, in which she and her collaborators surveyed people who had experienced personal bankruptcy, asked them whether they’d experienced health-related financial distress, and concluded that 60% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. result…
I recently gave a talk about shared decision making at the annual conference for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Here is a nice write-up of that talk. For those of you silly enough not to travel to Florida to hear me pontificate! After listening to the treatment alternatives—surveillance, or active treatment with surgery and radiation—a…
How is a physician supposed to know which medicine is most affordable under which insurance plan?
Fortunately, there are tools coming into use designed to help clinicians figure out patient-specific costs of any medication they prescribe. The tools (jargon alert!) are called RTBTs, for real-time benefit tools.
Here is a public service advertisement, promoting vaccines. (Thanks to Michelle Meyer for making me aware of it.) It harkens back to a day when vaccines weren’t yet available for diseases like polio: Do you think it will work?