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How to Stop Breast Cancer Surgeons from Overtreating Their Patients
A study shows that a medication causes more harms than benefits, and physicians like me keep prescribing the pill anyway, either because we don’t learn about the study, don’t believe the study or are simply stuck in our ways. Even professionals have a hard time breaking bad habits. So what do you think happened when…
Three Things to Know about Future Healthcare Spending
For my entire life, a half century and counting, healthcare spending in the U.S. has almost always risen faster than inflation. Sometimes it’s relatively slow, sometimes it’s relatively fast, but no matter the time, healthcare spending is climbing. Getting healthcare spending under control is really important for us to do if we hope to have…
Why You Might Get Kidney Cancer If You Move To Florida
About one in fifty people reading this essay will be diagnosed with kidney cancer at some time in their life. In fact, one out of one people writing this essay has already been diagnosed with kidney cancer. (I had a small tumor removed from my left kidney not long after I turned 50.) But how many people…
More Young People Die in America than in Other Rich Countries (Two Pictures Explain Why)
Shutterstock The average life expectancy of American men is almost four years less than men in Switzerland. In fact, among 17 high income countries, U.S. men ranked 17th in life expectancy. American women die young, too, with a life expectancy five years less than the average Japanese woman. Why is American life expectancy so poor? In part,…
Doctors Can't Be Trusted to Tell Patients Whether They Should Receive Robotic Surgery
Patients often rely on physicians for information about their treatment alternatives. Unfortunately, that information is not always objective. Consider a man with early stage prostate cancer interested in surgical removal of his tumor, but uncertain whether it is better for the surgery to be performed with the help of robotic technology. He asks his surgeon…
Inflation Crawls While Deductibles Sprint Ahead
With increasing frequency, Americans are purchasing health insurance plans that require high out-of-pocket costs. Chief among those costs are deductibles, the amount of money a person or family must spend out-of-pocket on medical care in a year before their health insurance “kicks in.” As this figure illustrates, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, deductibles have been…