Writing Sabbatical
I am currently on sabbatical (and enjoying some hiking in the Appalachian Mountains). Blog posts will resume in September!
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Who Receives More Wasteful Care: Medicaid Enrollees or People with Private Insurance?
Some medical services are unnecessary. Is it your first day of uncomplicated lower back pain? You don’t need an x-ray. But many patients continue to receive such services anyway, perhaps because they demand them or, perhaps, because their providers keep recommending them. But does the likelihood of unnecessary services depend on your insurance? Specifically, do Medicaid…
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How to Stop Breast Cancer Surgeons from Overtreating Their Patients
A study shows that a medication causes more harms than benefits, and physicians like me keep prescribing the pill anyway, either because we don’t learn about the study, don’t believe the study or are simply stuck in our ways. Even professionals have a hard time breaking bad habits. So what do you think happened when…
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That Heart Attack Is Going to Cost You
Health insurance is not what it used to be. With increasing frequency, Americans who purchase private health insurance find themselves with plans that require them to fork over significant amounts of money every time they receive healthcare. That means if you get, say, a heart attack, your portion of the hospital bill is probably going…
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Finally! Starting to Study Food Waste
In developed countries, upwards of 65% of food is wasted, meaning that somewhere from farm to table it ends up in the trash. Fortunately, researchers are finally beginning to study the problem:
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What Will It Take to Keep People from Gaining Weight?
Losing weight is hard. And keeping it off once you’ve lost it–that’s probably even harder. Just ask Oprah. So maybe those of us who are overweight or obese should simply focus on not gaining more weight than we’ve already gained. Surely that’s easier. Right? Well, not long ago a group of researchers ran a study…
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The Cost of New Cancer Drugs (In One Picture)
“Specialty drugs” – that’s what they’re called. Not the pills of old, these pharmaceuticals are often given intravenously or through injection. Often more biologic in their synthesis than chemical, they are expensive to produce and often target narrow disease processes, meaning the number of patients likely to benefit from them is much much smaller than,…
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Medical Debt Demystified (What You Owe Isn't Necessarily What You Owe)
When Lorie Duff was pregnant with her third child, she did what all good moms are supposed to do. She went to the ObGyn clinic for prenatal care. But she fell behind on the clinic payments. She only made about $25,000 a year managing an auto parts store while her husband stayed home with their…
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Obamacare Insurance Premiums – Not Growing Too Fast
Here’s a picture from a New England Journal of Medicine article showing that in 2015 and 2016, Obamacare premiums grew more slowly than private insurance premiums rose before the law came into effect: The Obamacare markets are new and unsettled. But so far they aren’t leading to runaway inflation. But what will happen to these…
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What Is Maddening about Pharmaceutical Prices?
Imagine that you are gasping for breath, literally on the verge of death. Then someone injects you with a medicine and – miracle! – you are perfectly healthy again. Would you pay $300 for that injection? The treatment is epinephrine; your illness was a life-threatening allergy. And that $300 price? That reflects a six-fold increase…