“DOCTOR FILES: When the Unknown Is Not So Bad” – Los Angeles Times
Healthcare is often really costly. And with increasing frequency, a significant chunk of those costs is being passed on to patients in the form of high deductibles, copays, or other out-of-pocket expenses. As a result, millions of Americans struggle to pay medical bills each year. What’s a poor patient to do? For starters–they can talk…
A recent New York Times op-ed by Joanne Lipman poses the question: “Is music the key to success?” As a serious amateur musician, I have long credited my half-way respectable pianistic accomplishments to the discipline I gained practicing Chopin etudes, and even to the teamwork I developed practicing Beethoven piano trios. In fact, I frequently pull out these…
In the US, Black patients often receive significantly less medical care than similarly sick white patients.
Warning: I am not writing about Angelina Jolie. I am not asking whether women like Jolie, with a strong family histories of breast cancer and known genetic mutations, should consider having bilateral mastectomies. Women like Jolie face extremely high lifetime risks of breast cancer, and thus must make difficult decisions about whether to receive prophylactic…
“Rationing By Any Other Name” – The New England Journal of Medicine
Last year, I joined Zeke Emanuel and some other great people in publishing an article on how to use the insights of behavioral economics to nudge physicians towards providing high-value care. Here is a link to that article. To give you a teaser, here are some of the principles we drew upon: And here are…