The free market is supposed to be efficient. Yet employers are throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars, by not giving their employees intelligently designed healthcare benefits that encourage them to shop for affordable lab tests. Right now, when your doctor orders a CBC (complete blood count) and a basic chemistry panel (checking your sodium,…
Sometimes it is hard for hospitals to provide expensive care to poor patients. When a low-income patient needs $20,000 of chemotherapy, a hospital loses money if that patient cannot pay for the medicine, or pays through Medicaid, with its relatively stingy reimbursement. Fortunately, the federal government created a program for hospitals that care for a…
In a 1967 experiment, psychologists trained pigeons to peck a red key to get food. (Pigeons were huge back then, research wise!) Then they tested whether the pigeons could learn to delay gratification. They set up the pecking booth so that those pigeons who waited a little longer before pecking the red key would get…
Is it difficult to push yourself each day to go to a boring job? If you are looking for a way out, consider how you got there in the first place. It may be that you chose that boring job over a more interesting one because you didn’t think alternative jobs would pay you enough for…
Shutterstock Too often, people with viral illness leave the doctor’s office with prescriptions for antibiotics. That’s a real problem. Antibiotics don’t treat viruses, often cause side effects, and when taken too often, lead to drug resistance. So when you have a bad cough and go to the doctor, you should hope to see someone who…
The right to die has played a critical role in the development of the doctor/patient relationship. It was families clamoring for the right to allow their loved ones to die who forced the world to recognize that physicians’ medical decisions aren’t just medical decisions, but involve enormous value judgments. In 1975, Karen Ann Quinlan’s loving…