Jonathan Gruber went from unknown to infamous in the last few weeks, a result of disparaging comments he made about the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and even more disparaging ones he made about the American people. According to Gruber, the Obama administration counted on “the stupidity of the American voter” to pass the bill. In fact,…
For decades now, policymakers have been trying to slow down the growth of healthcare costs. For much of this time, a large part of that effort was directed at hospital spending. American hospitals are extremely expensive, and take care of patients with the most severe illnesses. So if we’re going to control costs, it seems…
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine in June (no one accused me of being a timely blogger!) shows that academic medical centers often provide poorly-reimbursed services that other healthcare institutions avoid. Where more general hospitals might avoid having psychiatric emergencies available, 90% of academic medical centers offer such services: Whereas only 4%…
Such a no-brainer: If patients who receive care at Hospital A are more likely to get readmitted to the hospital 10, 20 or 30 days after discharge than patients in Hospital B, then Hospital A must be doing something wrong. Perhaps clinicians at that hospital are less adept at diagnosing and managing patients’ problems. Perhaps…
High costs make it hard for many patients to afford their medications. That’s why some medical experts believe we should give important medications to patients for free, to see if that improves their health outcomes. One famous example of this approach is the MI FREEE Trial, which offered free cardiovascular medication to patients who would…
When the health insurance exchanges began operating last year, critics complained that people were being forced out of their insurance plans. They correctly pointed out that Obama was mistaken to promise that “if you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your plan.” Obama’s promise was wrong not because the Affordable Care…
Not long ago, the Joint Commission (a healthcare quality organization) established that patients with pneumonia should receive antibiotics within four hours of diagnosis. Timely diagnosis and treatment can be the difference between life and death in patients with this illness. In fact, some people believe this kind of quality measure should play a large role…
This cartoon made the rounds of twitter a few weeks ago, and was first brought to my attention by Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd). But it is such an entertaining cartoon, I thought I would circulate it again: For all its flaws, Obamacare has done more to increase access to health insurance than any government program since…
Here is another great picture from the people at Vox. It shows the United States in the middle of OECD countries, when it comes to spending on social services, like healthcare, unemployment, and the like. Despite being in the middle, however, the US is better understood as an outlier, on two extremes of this spectrum….
One year does not a trend make, but it does look like prices for health insurance under Obamacare next year will decline, on average. Ezra Klein, over at Vox.com, produced a nice picture of these prices: Who knows: in the long run, maybe the name of this law – The Affordable Care Act – will…