Here is the opening of an article I recently published in JAMA, available now online, in which I raise concerns about misguided congressional efforts to promote the use of high-value healthcare services, without doing anything to reduce the use of low value ones. Health care systems around the world are under pressure to restrain health…
The United States Medicare program is forbidden, by law, from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies. This was part of a negotiation that was reached at the time that the government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, created Medicare Part D, to cover prescription benefits for Medicare recipients. The pharmaceutical industry was quite worried that government…
Here is a chart from the Washington Post, showing the percent of people lacking health insurance over the last few years. For a long time now, a higher proportion of Democrats have been uninsured than Republicans, with low income and minority communities experiencing a disproportionately high uninsurance rate. But since Obamacare has come into effect,…
Folks around the country are signing up for health insurance right now on the Obamacare exchanges, and some are seeing a very confusing set of options, with price hikes, or maybe not price hikes, and with subsidies, or maybe not such generous subsidies. Here is a great take on what’s happening in NC: Obamacare Customers…
The problem with the FDA is that if often requires so much proof of safety and effectiveness that the time it takes to bring a new product to market can grow by 3, 4, or even more years. FDA delays into the time that companies have to exclusively produce and sell their products. In recognition…
I recently blogged about a study showing that the same information, when presented in a graph, is more credible to people. One of my friends pointed out that Monty Python figured this out a few decades ago. “In this graph, this column represents 23% of the population. This column represents 28% of the population, and…
Sabin Russell wrote a great piece in Health Affairs recently, on the drought in investment to develop new medical devices. Read it if you have access. If you don’t, here are some of her main points. 1. Venture capital for device manufacturers has been drying up for a while: “‘For five years, this industry has…
If I told you there was a new medicine effective in treating a previously untreatable illness, you might be interested. If you have the illness, you might even read up and try to figure out whether the medicine would work for you. Ideally, you will evaluate the strength of evidence – was it a randomized…
In a previous post, I argued in favor of Rob Califf as FDA Commissioner. Here is an article from the Duke Chronicle, exploring more of this important debate. Dr. Robert Califf, former vice chancellor of clinical and translational research, may soon be taking helm of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but not without resistance from organizations…
We spend more for medical care in the United States than just about anywhere in the world, but it’s not because people in this country get admitted to the hospital and stay for long periods of time. Instead, we have shorter length of stays in American hospitals than in the vast majority of developed countries…