Is Health Insurance Too Cheap?
Researchers at USC recently published a study designed to find out how much people are willing to pay for better drug coverage from their health insurance plan…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Researchers at USC recently published a study designed to find out how much people are willing to pay for better drug coverage from their health insurance plan…(Read the rest and view comments at Scientocracy)
Healthcare reimbursement in the U.S. is frighteningly complex. We have federal payers, like Medicare; state/federal payers, like Medicaid; private, for-profit insurance companies, like Aetna; private, not for profit insurers, like many local Blue Cross Blue Shield networks. Oh yes, and we have private insurance companies managing reimbursement for many Medicare and Medicaid recipients. This complexity…
When Rita Volk, a busy college student, first experienced a nagging sensation in her right ear, she ignored it. Even though she felt like she was traveling in an under-pressurized airplane, Volk assumed the problem would go away. But it persisted, and her primary care doctor recommended she see an ear, nose and throat (ENT)…

An interesting article by Peter Schwartz in the latest Hastings Center Report on whether patients, facing difficult medical decisions, ought to get precise numbers on the risks and benefits of their alternatives. I contributed a commentary, urging researchers to keep developing better ways to help patients make rational use of the numbers.
Behavioral science has taught me that subtle environmental cues can have a surprisingly strong influence on people. I don’t know if the following cue was purposeful or not, but the relative size of these two receptacles – the blue one being the recycling one of course – definitely sends a strong signal about how much…
Here’s a picture from a New England Journal of Medicine article showing that in 2015 and 2016, Obamacare premiums grew more slowly than private insurance premiums rose before the law came into effect: The Obamacare markets are new and unsettled. But so far they aren’t leading to runaway inflation. But what will happen to these…
In the United States, the FDA tried to mandate that cigarette companies put nasty images of the harms of smoking onto cigarette packages, images that would take up at least half of the carton. It looks like that effort has failed, because the courts have determined that it violates the First Amendment. I wonder what…