This week, my good friend Reshma Jagsi and I published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which we explain why physicians are doing their job, as physicians, when they pay attention to healthcare costs. Here is a snippet from that article, and a link to find the full version. Health care costs…
A new study asks Orthopedic surgeons to guess the price of the devices they implant – “the amount your institution currently pays the vendor for the implant.” Despite a lenient grading system, in which the researchers counted as correct any guess within 20% of the actual price, surgeons estimated costs correctly only 1 in 5…
The Affordable Care Act established several programs to promote the formation of Accountable Care Organizations. These ACOs are a relatively new way of organizing healthcare delivery, in which healthcare providers join together – perhaps across physician groups and hospitals – to care for a population of patients, and are then held accountable both for the…
I have written a couple of pieces lately documenting the high percentage of physicians who refuse to take Medicaid patients, and some of the reasons for their refusal. One of my pieces prompted a physician to email me with his take on this matter. I am going to quote from that email, but take out…
Here is a nice picture, from a HuffPo article , showing how much money states are losing by not expanding Medicaid in accordance with the Affordable Care Act: Not a small change, by any measure. Shows how much it means to some folks to prove their anti-ACA bonafides. What is too often lost, in this…
Here is a picture from a recent Atlantic article, showing that, pre-Obamacare implementation, women have more difficulty paying for medical care: The ACA should fix improve this situation, meaning Obamacare should help women more than men. (Click here to view comments)
In a very influential 2009 New Yorker essay, Atul Gawande described why health care spending is rampant in McAllen, Texas, an example of the regional variations in healthcare utilization that policy experts at Dartmouth have been studying for years. Indeed, this research has shown much higher spending in places like McAllen, compared to cities like Salem,…
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…
I have been worried about healthcare costs for a long time, so the fact that we’ve had a few years in which healthcare costs have risen more slowly than normal hasn’t got me overly excited. I’ve seen this happen before, and worry that costs will accelerate again soon. But a recent study suggests that this…
We all know that healthcare costs in the U.S. are too high. But why is American healthcare so expensive? Some experts blame the desire for profit. Russell Andrews, a neurosurgeon and author of Too Big To Succeed laments “the morphing of American medicine from a function of a humanitarian society into a revenue stream for healthcare profits, drug…