Insurance Woes
A great cartoon from the Kaiser Health News website that pithily captures the “wonders” of the American health insurance system.

A great cartoon from the Kaiser Health News website that pithily captures the “wonders” of the American health insurance system.

In a recent report from the IOM, the US comes in with surprisingly low life expectancy compared to other developed countries. Take, for instance, this picture from USA Today, showing life expectancy for women:

At the same time, we spend WAY MORE on health care than any of our peers. No one is even a close second. Does that mean our spending is not yielding appropriate results? Those of you who follow my writing (I’m talking to BOTH of you) know that I have serious concerns about health care spending in the US. But keep in mind, that life expectancy is a TERRIBLE measure of health care quality…(Read more here)
With all the hype and controversy over Obamacare, once in a while it’s nice to look at the facts. And here are recent numbers – on the percent of Americans who lack health insurance, a figure that has dropped significantly in recent months with the expansion of Medicaid and the opening of the health insurance…
Shutterstock If you get health insurance through your job, beware: you might be picking up more of the cost of your medical care than you realize. With increasing frequency, employers are directing their workers to the kind of high deductible, high out-of-pocket insurance plans that leave workers financially responsible for a surprising portion of their…
I have been writing a lot lately about out-of-pocket costs for health care in United States. In my research on this topic, I came across the following picture, which shows how much insurers are spending on healthcare, among people in the United States receiving insurance through their employers, and also how much those employees are spending…
In The Heart of Power, David Blumenthal and James Morone relate the 75 year history of presidential efforts (typically unsuccessful) to reform the U.S. healthcare system. I used to think major reform efforts did not happen for many years after FDR’s New Deal. After all, social security had taken a huge dent out of poverty among…
Common wisdom ain’t always that wise. The pundits have concluded that Obama made a big mistake by focusing on health care reform this past year, when he should have focused on the economy. Politically speaking, the pundits are correct. Obama has appeared to be ignoring the economy at the expense of health care reform, and…