NPR’s Planet Money published two excellent graphs this week, comparing health care spending in the US now versus the 70s and 90s. For example, here’s what they reveal about hospital versus non-hospital spending: In other words, hospitals have a shrinking proportion of the health care dollar, but not one that is shrinking very much. Despite…
In the New York Times on Friday, Roni Caryn Rabin writes a great article about the crazy price hikes that hospitals and medical clinics impose upon patients who come to them from “out of the network.” Examples include a more than $6,000 doctor visit, one for which Medicare would have paid less than $200. Examples…
Do you feel like your out of pocket medical expenses are growing? You are not alone. Even for people getting Medicare, the amount of money coming out of patients pockets is growing too. And it is growing not only because all health care spending is growing, but also because patients are being asked to bear…
Here is a video illustrating my take on why so many people still believe Obamacare includes a death panel, and why I think this kind of misguided believing is not a Republican thing, nor a Democratic thing, but…a HUMAN thing.
In a recent report from the IOM, the US comes in with surprisingly low life expectancy compared to other developed countries. Take, for instance, this picture from USA Today, showing life expectancy for women:
At the same time, we spend WAY MORE on health care than any of our peers. No one is even a close second. Does that mean our spending is not yielding appropriate results? Those of you who follow my writing (I’m talking to BOTH of you) know that I have serious concerns about health care spending in the US. But keep in mind, that life expectancy is a TERRIBLE measure of health care quality…(Read more here)
In August of 2009, Sarah Palin claimed that the health legislation being crafted by Democrats at the time would create a “death panel,” in which government bureaucrats would decide whether disabled and elderly patients are “worthy of healthcare.” Despite being debunked by fact-checkers and mainstream media outlets, this myth has persisted, with almost half of…
If Americans judged the quality of hospital care the way Newsweek judges high schools, we would soon be inundated with “charter hospitals” that only treat healthy patients. As reported in The New YorkTimes , thirty-seven of Newsweek’s top 50 high schools have selective admission standards, thereby enrolling the cream of the eighth grade crop. That means…
The idea seems so simple: (A) When hospitals leave catheters in people’s bladders for too long, people get urinary infections. (B) Third party payers like Medicare and insurance companies are then billed for the cost of treating these infections. (C) If Medicare refuses to pay for these treatments, and force hospitals to bear the cost…
In exciting news for breast cancer patients, the FDA recently approved Perjeta, a new treatment for metastatic breast cancer that delays progression of the disease by six months. But can we afford to offer this drug to every woman who could potentially benefit?… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
Two patients lie asleep on operating room tables, each with an inflamed appendix demanding to be relocated to a specimen jar. Two operations take place, each one lasting close to fifty minutes, each one performed by an experienced surgeon at a state-of-the-art U.S. hospital. One operation was priced at $1200 dollars. But the other one…