My student and colleague, Karen Scherr, recently published an excellent article showing that physicians don’t always describe robotic surgery in an unbiased manner. Here is a nice write up of that work: Author Peter Ubel referred to a study done at four Veterans Affairs medical centers of men making decisions on how best to treat…
For my entire life, a half century and counting, healthcare spending in the U.S. has almost always risen faster than inflation. Sometimes it’s relatively slow, sometimes it’s relatively fast, but no matter the time, healthcare spending is climbing. Getting healthcare spending under control is really important for us to do if we hope to have…
I know, I know: correlation does not mean causation. But it is still suspicious that when industry employees join as co-authors in medical journals, the randomized trials they are writing about are more likely to show positive results – results that make industry products look good. At least that was the finding from a study…
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!
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…
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…
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:
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…
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…
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: