Medicare could save more than $4 billion by negotiating prices on just four drugs. Want to guess what those drugs are? Or what diseases they treat? Are they drugs for common diseases, with lots of people yielding lots of savings? Or for rare cancers, where the drugs are so expensive there is still lots of money to save? read more here
The FDA has proposed new labels on grocery store food products, that adjust serving sizes to more accurately capture what Americans eat. Research I conducted with Steven Dallas and Peggy Liu suggests these labels could be a problem. Here is a great media story on our findings: Last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced…
Here is a nice piece in the Chronicle, the student newspaper at Duke, on price transparency in medical care. You know when UNDERGRADS start writing about a topic, it is hot! (Click here to view comments)
Physicians have been, at best, slow to adopt electronic medical records. But who can blame them? These computerized systems often cost lots of money, and force physicians to spend gobs of valuable time learning a new way to track how they care for patients. On the other hand, we would all be better off if…
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.
Check out this WHYY Radio Times segment I participated in on health care price transparency: When it comes to the cost of treating an illness, do you know how much your care costs? Many experts believe if patients would be more value- and cost-conscious when it comes to choosing where they receive care, overall health…
Paige Rentz, an excellent reporter at the Fayetteville Observer, recently posted a question and answer piece, exploring some of the pressing issues facing the second round of insurance enrollment, on the Obamacare health insurance exchanges. I suggest you look at the entire article. But here is a snippet: What’s at stake? Last year, North Carolina…