“Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs” – The New York Times
It’s not an easy time to be a small, rural hospital. Insurance companies aren’t willing to pay generously for your services, given your measly market share. You are increasingly forced to compete against large integrated healthcare systems – conglomerations of urban, suburban and rural providers armed with big marketing budgets and specialized (generously reimbursed!) services….
Getting relatively simple procedures is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere. Take the cost of an appendectomy: Or having a baby: Or having a baby by C-section, a more invasive procedure that is not only more expensive in the US than elsewhere, but is often more common: These prices beg for government regulation!
According to recent research, a hug a day could keep the doctor away. According to another study, twitter can predict the chance that people will experience heart attacks. A normal blogger would look at these two findings and tell a story about the relationship between stress and health. I’m not normal. I looked at these…
Cass Sunstein just posted a really nice write-up of the calorie count research I was lucky enough to conduct with Steven Dallas (now a law student at Duke) and Peggy Liu (a marketing Professor at University of Pittsburgh). Thought I’d give you a flavor of the write-up: A provision of the Affordable Care Act that…