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…
When is the treatment worse than the disease? When the high costs associated with care become a financial burden for patients and in many cases prevent them from protecting their health, contends Peter Ubel, MD, a 2007 recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. “We have reached a…
Ask physicians if our messed up malpractice system causes them to practice “defensive medicine,” and most will probably say yes – hard not to be paranoid with so many lawsuits affecting so many physicians. Some experts even contend that major reforms of our malpractice system could go a long way towards controlling spiraling healthcare costs. On 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….
Here is a link to an article I co-authored in the New England Journal this week, with Yousuf Zafar and Amy Abernethy. In the article, we urge physicians to talk about out-of-pocket costs with patients, given that these costs can sometimes have a bigger negative impact on their lives than the kind of treatment side…
To almost every claim that the American healthcare system is overpriced, defenders of the United States can point to the comparison problem—it is not fair to compare American surgeons, or hospitals, to our peers in Europe when American surgeons and hospitals are not the same as in those other countries. Our surgeons are better trained,…
Most new insurance plans sold on Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges will have deductibles greater than $1000. That’s the kind of number that’s going to make people think twice about going to the emergency room when they experience shortness of breath or chest pain. Unfortunately, a new study shows it’s also the kind of “skin in the game” that…
Thousands of children have passed through the doors of Vanderbilt’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. The lobby is bright, full of natural light and decorated in bold colors and kid-friendly shapes such as stars. It hums with the quiet chaos of sick and recovering children. The building opened as Nashville’s first and only freestanding children’s…
When Dr. Jeffrey Rice needed to schedule outpatient foot surgery for his son three years ago, he called the recommended facility to find out what it would cost. The estimate was so high — $15,000 to $25,000 — that Rice asked the surgeon for a second option. The cost for the same one-hour procedure at…
Recent news reports have excitedly announced that healthcare inflation seems to be under control. In 2012, for example the cost of health insurance premiums rose only 4% for a typical American family, a paltry figure compared to the almost 10% annual increases experienced a decade or so ago. But just how good is this good news? Look…