Back in June, I published a series of essays about efforts to fly people around the country to give them better access to life-saving organ transplants. For your convenience, I have pulled the three essays together into one PDF. As a teaser, I will remind you of the first few paragraphs of the essay. But…
Under the Affordable Care Act, the percent of Americans who lack any health insurance has declined significantly. Put another way – more Americans have health insurance than ever. But having insurance coverage is different than being well covered by insurance. Sometimes a person can enroll in a health insurance plan, and still face the kind of out-of-pocket…
Here’s a display from an elementary school science fair, cleverly showing how much sugar various beverages contain:
The FDA has proposed new labels on grocery store food products, that adjust serving sizes to more accurately capture what Americans eat. Research I conducted with Steven Dallas and Peggy Liu suggests these labels could be a problem. Here is a great media story on our findings: Last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced…
A while back, I wrote a piece on the problems caused when hospitals don’t coordinate care in a way that promotes patient sleep. Now Shefali Luthra, a reporter at Kaiser Health News, has written a great piece, delving deeper into this issue. Here is the beginning of that story: Hospitals are reviewing their patient-sleep policies and…
No surprise to learn that the majority of Republicans dislike Obamacare. But did you know that the majority of Republicans, who SIGNED UP FOR INSURANCE through Obamacare, still dislike the law? That’s one finding from a recent Kaiser survey: Notably, they dislike the law even though they LIKE THEIR INSURANCE: I look forward to the…
There has been lots written lately about the soaring cost of cancer care. You’re spending a lot on cancer recently in part because of many wonderful new treatments that come with a substantial price tag. But there has been less chatter about which cancers we are spending money on. Here’s a nice picture illustrating that…
Here is a link to a story from one of my favorite reporters, Rebecca Plevin from KPCC radio in California. She uncovered a startup company that tries to help people shop for healthcare services, by letting them name their price and seeing if any healthcare providers are game: Shopping for things like hotel reservations is…
A recent Gallup poll asked people how they would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in a wide range of professions. Not surprisingly, Congress didn’t come out very well on this poll, rating even below car salespeople on these traits. Among highly paid professionals, physicians came out on top. Physicians are still highly…
Recently, I showed some data illustrating the rapid growth in healthcare jobs in the United States, compared to jobs in other parts of the economy. Here’s a picture, courtesy of Dan Diamond, showing that this growth has not been steady. Instead, the growth of hospital jobs in the US stalled for a while, before taking…