Copay Assistance – Good For Patients, Bad For Prices
Peter Bach and I have an essay in the Annals of Internal Medicine laying out some of the problems with pharmaceutical funded copay assistance programs. Check it out.
Peter Bach and I have an essay in the Annals of Internal Medicine laying out some of the problems with pharmaceutical funded copay assistance programs. Check it out.
Shutterstock Medical appointments are getting shorter by the year. Sometimes it feels like doctors have no time to spend with their patients. What’s to blame for these brief clinical interactions? It could be the electronic health record, or EHR. Because of changes in how insurance companies and the government pay for medical care, doctors increasingly…
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…
We’ve done a lot of things in the United States over the last few decades to curb tobacco consumption. We’ve warned people cigarettes will kill them, created persuasive ad campaigns to scare people away from cigarettes, and added a hefty tax to the product. As a result, cigarette use in United States is lower than…
In a recent Huffington Post article, I was described as a Duke University economist. I’m sure the economic community would like to make very clear that I am not one of its members. The same goes for most communities, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, despite that glaring error, much of the content of…
Want to know why we spent so much on healthcare in United States? There are lots of reasons. Our population is aging, the rate of diabetes is rising, and the healthcare industry keeps developing wonderful but expensive new technologies to treat our ailments. But more than anything, we have a price problem. It’s price increases…
Usually it costs money to get an MRI. But sometimes, in order to save money, insurance companies pay patients to seek less expensive medical care providers. Here is an excellent news report on the topic from The News & Observer: North Carolina’s largest health insurer is proposing a solution to control runaway health care costs:…