The bill she received in the mail revealed a staggering figure — $9,225 for one infusion of Avastin, a chemotherapy drug. And she would need many more such infusions. Fortunately, the dollar amount is what medical experts call a “charge,” which in normal marketplaces refers to the amount a provider expects for the good or…
The federal government is currently debating whether the big six health insurance companies in the U.S. will soon become the big four. Aetna and Humana have announced plans to merge, as have Anthem and Cigna. The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association strongly oppose the mergers, saying they will reduce competition in consumer…
For more than half a century now, the United States has stood out among its peers in the developed world for having the largest percent of its citizens living without health insurance. But once you turn 65-years-old in America, the government has you covered. Right? Maybe not so much. Because even after people enroll in,…
Under the Affordable Care Act, the percent of Americans who lack any health insurance has declined significantly. Put another way – more Americans have health insurance than ever. But having insurance coverage is different than being well covered by insurance. Sometimes a person can enroll in a health insurance plan, and still face the kind of out-of-pocket…
There has been lots written lately about the soaring cost of cancer care. You’re spending a lot on cancer recently in part because of many wonderful new treatments that come with a substantial price tag. But there has been less chatter about which cancers we are spending money on. Here’s a nice picture illustrating that…
Here is a link to a story from one of my favorite reporters, Rebecca Plevin from KPCC radio in California. She uncovered a startup company that tries to help people shop for healthcare services, by letting them name their price and seeing if any healthcare providers are game: Shopping for things like hotel reservations is…
Recently, I showed some data illustrating the rapid growth in healthcare jobs in the United States, compared to jobs in other parts of the economy. Here’s a picture, courtesy of Dan Diamond, showing that this growth has not been steady. Instead, the growth of hospital jobs in the US stalled for a while, before taking…
I recently spoke with Audiey Kao, an ethics expert at the American Medical Association. Our conversation has been released as a podcast. We talked about quite a few things, but the part I enjoyed the most involved a gentle disagreement about healthcare profits. Here is a link to the podcast: AMA Journal of Ethics Podcast:…
As I have described in two earlier posts, here and here, the transplant system in the US suffers from terrible geographic disparities. People needing liver transplants in Northern California wait more than six years on average for an organ to become available, versus only three months in places like Memphis Tennessee. The solution to the…
Irena Bucci was receiving follow-up care after delivering her second baby when the obstetrician discovered a problem with her kidneys. “My creatinine was rising,” creatinine being a waste product normally cleared out of the bloodstream by healthy kidneys, “and my doctor didn’t know why. I didn’t have high blood pressure or diabetes,” two diseases that…