Is Information Always A Good Thing?

I am on a “writing sabbatical” this summer with limited access to the internet. I will resume posting articles in August. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

I recently wrote something in Forbes about all the mergers going on in the U.S. healthcare industry. Well here is a nice article about the growth of the healthcare system in Western North Carolina, that explores some of the same issues. Check it out: Mission Health Partners, the Accountable Care Organization of Mission Health System,…

In recent years, it feels like we’ve been inundated by stories of greedy pharmaceutical companies jacking up the price of important generic medications. In 2015, “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, recognized that no other generic companies were manufacturing Daraprim, a drug used to treat infections common among people with AIDS. So he raised the price of…

A while back, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler published an article in the New England Journal depicting what cereal boxes would look like if they provided people with useful health information. Here is a sample: What do you think?

I know, I know: correlation does not mean causation. But it is still suspicious that when industry employees join as co-authors in medical journals, the randomized trials they are writing about are more likely to show positive results – results that make industry products look good. At least that was the finding from a study…