According to figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation, one of the best sources of reliable health policy information, the majority of Americans will have to exhaust all their “liquid assets” to cover medical expenses, if they reach the maximum out-of-pocket costs allowed by their health insurance. The moral of this story is simple: stay healthy!
Yet another picture of the steep drop in the percent of Americans without healthcare insurance, post Obamacare. Thanks for sharing this, Dina Pomeranz (@DinaPomeranz).
This study came out a while ago, from ICYMI. The research team called up primary care practices and tried to make appointments for Medicaid patients. When states raised reimbursement rates, it became easier: Health insurance doesn’t do much good when patients can’t find doctors willing to accept crappy reimbursement.
The experiment was simple. A group of behaviorally-minded researchers tested whether patients are more likely to receive mammograms when those tests are automatically scheduled (meaning they can opt out if they want) versus when they have to opt in for the tests. Automatic scheduling should have increased mammograms. It didn’t. In one respect, it even…
In a recent Huffington Post article, I was described as a Duke University economist. I’m sure the economic community would like to make very clear that I am not one of its members. The same goes for most communities, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, despite that glaring error, much of the content of…
In the last few years, the U.S. health care system has seemingly been gripped by “back to the nineties” fever. Back then, we had a Democratic president working to reform the health care system. Experts from across this system were promoting the importance of controlling health care costs; the growth of health care expenditures even…