How Supermarkets Influence Shoppers
Here is a great graphic from the Center for Science in the Public Interest laying out how supermarkets lay out food to encourage impulse purchases: So much for “free” markets!
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The Healthcare Efficiency Myth – What Really Happens When Doctors And Hospitals Join Forces
For much of the history of U.S. medical care, hospitals and physicians have existed as separate financial entities. Physicians in the U.S. have typically been self-employed, as solo or group practitioners and not as hospital employees. An internist like me might have admitting privileges to several local hospitals. When we admit patients to one of…
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Single-Payer Health Care: Love It, Hate It, Love It, Hate It…
One reason our healthcare system in the United States is so messed up is that so few Americans understand much about it. For that reason, their attitudes towards various healthcare reform proposals veer left and right depending on how they are asked for their opinions. Here’s great evidence of that phenomenon, as reported by the…
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Guess Who Is Struggling to Pay Their Medical Bills!
Here is a picture from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing which Americans were most likely to report problems paying medical bills last year. The sad news is that just about any way you divide it, a hell of a lot of Americans are having a heckuva time paying these bills:
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Doctors Can't Be Trusted to Tell Patients Whether They Should Receive Robotic Surgery
Patients often rely on physicians for information about their treatment alternatives. Unfortunately, that information is not always objective. Consider a man with early stage prostate cancer interested in surgical removal of his tumor, but uncertain whether it is better for the surgery to be performed with the help of robotic technology. He asks his surgeon…
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Competition at Work!
Recently, pharmaceutical companies have been pricing many of their products at astounding values. A couple years ago, in fact, an amazing new hepatitis C drug came to market priced at about $90,000 per patient. But since that time, several other companies have come to market with competing products. That has brought the overall price of…
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Obamacare Reduced Racial Disparities in Healthcare Insurance
Research led by Stacey McMorrow (a former student of mine) shows that Obamacare was especially helpful in enabling black and Hispanic people obtain healthcare insurance: Disparities in insurance rates among either groups are declining:
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Need More Evidence the U.S. Healthcare Market Is Screwed Up?
In a healthy consumer market, people compare the price and quality of goods inside whether it’s worth paying extra money to get the best possible products. In healthcare, it’s often almost impossible to figure out what things cost. And when you figured it out, the price variation often makes no sense at all – having…
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Historic Drop in U.S. Uninsured Rate
Yet another picture of the steep drop in the percent of Americans without healthcare insurance, post Obamacare. Thanks for sharing this, Dina Pomeranz (@DinaPomeranz).
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Bias in Scientific Citation
Here is a figure reproduced in Fortune, showing that when researchers publish articles raising questions about the harms of salt, they cite other researchers who raised similar questions. By contrast, when they definitively argue in favor of the harms, they cite other definitive colleagues. Some of this makes scientific sense. If you show a particular…