Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t die of the disease. Between 2011 and 2015, 112.6 per 100,000 men per year were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.S., but only 19.5 per 100,000 men per year died of the disease over that same period of time. That is still far too many deaths. But the…
Physicians need to broach discussions about out-of-pocket costs with patients the same way they discuss a treatment’s side effects, public policy professors wrote. “Admittedly, out-of-pocket costs are difficult to predict, but so are many medical outcomes that are nevertheless included in clinical discussions,” Peter Ubel, MD, of Duke University’s School of Public Policy, and colleagues wrote….
As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, many women with this diagnosis face complicated decisions about what kind of medicine or chemotherapy to take, if any, to reduce their chance of cancer recurrence. As I discussed in a recent post, the mathematics of such decisions can be hard to comprehend for many patients. …
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, millions of people receive generous subsidies to cover the cost of health insurance. Some people, in fact, receive coverage for free, their monthly premiums paid in full by the federal government. Unfortunately, even a small change in price can cause people to lose their coverage. That’s important…
In the last few decades, medical schools have been teaching us doctors to inform patients about their treatment alternatives, so our patients can pick the alternative that best fits with their individual values. Which raises the question: Should doctors take the time to figure out the cost of treatment alternatives and communicate such information to…
I’m not sure why I didn’t notice this earlier, but I just came across a very gracious, even overly generous, review of my book, Critical Decisions in the leading journal of bioethics, The Hastings Center Report. I thought I would share it with you: When I finally got eyeglasses as a teenager, after denying the…