There are many reasons that life expectancy is not a good measure of a health care system. For starters, how long people live is often more a function of public health systems then of medical care systems, with clean water and low rates of infectious diseases having more impact on people’s life expectancy than their…
In the wake of my recent New York Times op-ed, and other writing about patient out-of-pocket costs, I was interviewed by Tammy Worth, a writer at Renal and Urology News. She did a great job of exploring this controversial topic. Here is a sneak peek at her article, followed by a link to the full…
Recently, I wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Timescalling upon physicians to discuss out-of-pocket costs with their patients before making medical decisions, and urging patients to take matters into their own hands if their physicians fail to initiate such conversations. This Op-Ed closely mirrored an argument I made in the New England Journal of Medicine with my colleagues Yousuf Zafar and Amy…
I have been writing a lot lately about out-of-pocket costs for health care in United States. In my research on this topic, I came across the following picture, which shows how much insurers are spending on healthcare, among people in the United States receiving insurance through their employers, and also how much those employees are spending…
For years now, the pharmaceutical industry has justified its prices and its profits by reminding us that their products eventually go off patent, and are then offered cheaply to people around the world in generic form. They warned us that the pipeline for new and innovative drugs is less and less promising, because so many…
I have been writing a fair amount lately about the out-of-pocket costs that many Americans face when they receive healthcare services. A new report by The Commonwealth Fund provides a picture of the scope of this issue. It compares the US to 10 other developed countries, and shows not only that people in the US spend…
I want to share a wonderful blog post with you, written by one of “my” students, Laura Mortimer – a student in the Masters in Public Policy program at the Sanford School at Duke, who also happens to be a talented writer. In linking to her post, and then calling her my student, I of course…
In response to the New England Journal article I published with Yousuf Zafar and Amy Abernethy, Newsweek chimed in this week with a report on the topic, including some thoughtful commentary from other medical experts. I thought it was worth pointing you towards this article, in part to remind you that Newsweek still exists, and…
If an antibiotic would cure your infection, your doctor would probably still warn you about the chance of sun sensitivity before prescribing the pill. But even when the costs of a medical intervention might force patients to choose between paying the bill or keeping up with their mortgages, American physicians rarely discuss that serious side effect with…
I recently learned about a company called OpsCost, which has a very user-friendly website designed to help people figure out how much different hospitals charge for a wide range of treatments and procedures. The company makes use of the data that the Medicare program has recently made available to the general public, and then presents…