Here is a fascinating picture from the Wall Street Journal, showing how much Medicare has been spending on hepatitis C treatments lately. You can see that the cost is rising dramatically: Keep in mind, however, that the new and expensive hepatitis C treatments currently on the market will dramatically reduce costs in the future, because…
Medical experts now agree that as a result of aggressive screening programs, we have an epidemic of cancer overdiagnosis in the United States. With mammograms finding tiny cancers and PSA tests discovering unpalpable prostate cancers, we are now unearthing some cancers too early for our own good. What do experts mean by “overdiagnosis,” you ask?…
Here is a fine story in the Los Angeles Times written by Lisa Zamosky about the importance of talking with your doctor about your out of pocket medical costs. Despite high medical costs topping Americans’ list of financial concerns, many of us have a hard time telling our doctors that the care they’re prescribing may…
American manufacturing has declined precipitously in the past few decades. Companies that were once the source of fabulous wealth for Americans – the U.S. Steel profits that enriched the Carnegie family, the Ford Motor F -1.29% Company profits that enriched its eponymous family – are now struggling to keep up with foreign competitors. Thank God…
Rebecca Plevin, from KPCC public radio in California, is quickly becoming one of my favorite health reporters. She is really digging in to the strange world of health economics. Here’s a nice piece she did, comparing how people talk about costs when meeting with financial counselors versus veterinarians versus, of course, going to see their…
There are lots of things we need to do to get healthcare costs under control in the United States. Critical to most of our efforts, however, is to get physicians to practice cost-conscious care. Here is a nice story on this topic, from Rebecca Plevin at KPCC public radio in California: As regular readers of…
If you were a cancer center trying to get patients to come to receive care at your facility, what message would you send them? In other words, what would you as a cancer center director think people would value in choosing a place to receive cancer care? One way to answer this would be to…
Recently, Dr. R. Adams Dudley, director of the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value, circulated a picture illustrating rapid growth in the use of tests and other imaging procedures between 2000 and 2013. I thought it deserved further circulation. It reveals 60-80% expansion of testing and imaging, with only – only? – a 40% increase in…
The other day I posted a picture on job growth in the United States, in healthcare versus other parts of the economy. It showed that most growth was healthcare related. Well here is another picture, from the Wall Street Journal, showing just how the U.S. economy has changed, and how much healthcare has come to…
Here is a quick review from the Commonwealth Fund showing what happened to jobs in the United States since 2000. A dramatic growth in healthcare jobs, and almost no growth in the rest of the economy: Something to keep in mind, because if we ever get healthcare costs under control, we had better hope to…