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Buying Junk Food With Taxpayer Dollars: Whether Interventions to Encourage Healthy Purchasing Work
BypeterOne of my elderly relatives was in line at the grocery store one day and saw the person ahead of him charging what looked like a cart full of junk food to her food assistance card. My relative was incensed: Why, should his hard earned tax dollars be used to pay for someone’s Cheetos? Currently,…
Behavioral Economic Interventions – It’s Not a Choice Between Nudges and Shoves
ByadminThe field of behavioral economics has brought attention to promising ways of motivating people to make better life choices. Many behavioral economic-inspired interventions are relatively hands off — they nudge people to make wiser decisions without in any way restricting their choices. The idea of nudges was made justifiably popular by Cass Sunstein and Dick Thaler…
Here’s Why Pharmaceutical Companies Raise Their Prices So Much
BypeterYes, I’ve ranted about healthcare prices before. On more than one occasion. But I have a new rant for you. It’s not about the high price of new drugs It’s not about a couple pharmo-bro CEOs hiking prices of generic medications by 4 or 5,000% It’s about brand name drugs already on the market, that,…
The Verdict Is In—Price Gouging Harms People With Gout
Byadmin2The patient arrived in my clinic, their right big toe the color of a spring strawberry. The lightest touch caused exquisite pain. Fortunately, I was able to prescribe a pill (an ancient medicine, actually) and the patient was better by the next day.
Too bad that simple treatment is becoming unaffordable, through a maddening combination of greed and regulatory failure.
The Crushing Cost Of Tracking Healthcare Quality—One Hospital’s Story
Byadmin2A whole industry is devoted to measuring, tracking and even incentivizing the quality of American hospital care. Unfortunately, that industry is horribly inefficient, costing us billions of dollars.
Quality measurement is inefficient in large part because there is no single source that hospitals (and provider systems, more generally) can use to track the quality of their care.
Medicare Drug Coverage Is Often Inadequate—Here’s Why
Byadmin2Your father’s rheumatoid arthritis medicine was working well, fighting off that otherwise debilitating illness. Then he found out that Medicare would no longer pay for the drug. Your aunt’s multiple sclerosis was flaring and her neurologist recommended a promising new treatment. But she learned that she would have to try, and “fail,” on two other…
