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Reducing End-Of-Life Costs. It’s Not A Futile Pursuit.
BypeterIn my most recent post, I describe several psychologic and economic phenomena impeding our ability to rein in the cost of end-of-life care. In brief, people with nothing to lose, who don’t trust doctors recommending they receive hospice care, and who face few economic consequences for receiving expensive care – they aren’t likely to put the…
Time To Take Tax Breaks Away From Non-Profit Hospitals
Byadmin2Many wealthy nonprofit hospitals provide surprisingly little charitable care.
Are Doctors Afraid to Talk Math with Their Patients?
ByadminBefore patients can become savvy consumers of healthcare, they need information about their healthcare choices. Too often, such information is nearly impossible to get, especially when it requires doctors to give patients useful statistics about things like treatment side effects. Since publishing Critical Decisions this fall, I have received a number of emails from readers who…
Pandemics and Overdoses: COVID-19 May Worsen Our Opioid Epidemic
ByadminThe novel coronavirus has decimated our economy at the same time as it has directly threatened our health. As if that weren’t bad enough, the economic damage Covid-19 is causing could have an indirect impact on our health. Consider what we already know about economic downturns and opioid overdoses. A research team led by Atheendar…
Outpatient Spending Is Catching Up To Hospital Expenditures
ByadminFor decades now, policymakers have been trying to slow down the growth of healthcare costs. For much of this time, a large part of that effort was directed at hospital spending. American hospitals are extremely expensive, and take care of patients with the most severe illnesses. So if we’re going to control costs, it seems…
Are Doctors Ready to Talk about Health Care Costs with Patients?
ByadminWhile I was on vacation, I spoke with reporter about a topic near and dear to my heart – importance of getting clinicians to talk about health care costs with their patients. The reporter put together a very nice piece on the topic, which I thought I would share with you: Doctors Aren’t Grasping For…
