“Revolutions are often fought over dichotomies—the king versus the people, the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, and, of course, the autonomous patient versus the paternalistic doctor.” So observes Peter Ubel in the conclusion of Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Medical Choices Together. Who decides? Doctor or patient? For decades, too…
NPR’s Planet Money published two excellent graphs this week, comparing health care spending in the US now versus the 70s and 90s. For example, here’s what they reveal about hospital versus non-hospital spending: In other words, hospitals have a shrinking proportion of the health care dollar, but not one that is shrinking very much. Despite…
In the New York Times on Friday, Roni Caryn Rabin writes a great article about the crazy price hikes that hospitals and medical clinics impose upon patients who come to them from “out of the network.” Examples include a more than $6,000 doctor visit, one for which Medicare would have paid less than $200. Examples…
I got an email recently from someone who read Critical Decisions, and who said it resonated with her in part because of work she does with a breast cancer hot line. “I’ve been volunteering as a Helpline worker for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. We get a lot of calls from women who seem to have…
My 14-year-old son Jordan did not make the JV basketball team in his high school. Not very surprising really. There is no freshmen basketball team at his school and only six freshmen made the JV, out of a class of more than 400 students. Six freshmen who were all taller and better basketball players than my…
Do you feel like your out of pocket medical expenses are growing? You are not alone. Even for people getting Medicare, the amount of money coming out of patients pockets is growing too. And it is growing not only because all health care spending is growing, but also because patients are being asked to bear…
Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn relates the following from Einstein as one of his favorite all time quotes: “There are only two ways to live our life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” My thought: Can’t we live as if SOME things are miracles???…
The first test tube baby was born July 25th, 1978 in the north of England. Louise Brown was called the “baby of the century” by some and a “moral abomination” by others. It wasn’t Brown who critics accused of being immoral, of course. She was just a blameless infant. Instead, it was her doctors who…
The Obamacare law establishes what are known as “health insurance exchanges” to help people compare health insurance plans. It is, when you think about it (heck: even when you DON’T think about it) a pro-market aspect of the law—it gets insurance out there to consumers so they can pick the plan that best suits them. …
As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, many women with this diagnosis face complicated decisions about what kind of medicine or chemotherapy to take, if any, to reduce their chance of cancer recurrence. As I discussed in a recent post, the mathematics of such decisions can be hard to comprehend for many patients. …