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,…
Many readers will recognize Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim that: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Some will even recognize his vehement opposition to Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare proposal, before the program was passed into law: “We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb…
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…
It is always important to remember that healthcare and health insurance are two very different things, and neither of them is a guarantee of good health. Therefore, when people talk about Obamacare providing people with medical care, we have to remember that it primarily provides people with health care insurance. And as I have written about previously, insurance coverage…
A recent Gallup poll shows that the percent of Americans without health insurance has dropped significantly in recent months. Here’s a picture of their findings: This drop has occurred largely in response to Obamacare – to the expansion of Medicaid in those states which went along with that provision of the law, and with the…
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…
I’m-sure-you-know-this-by-now fact-of-the-day: the US leads the world in healthcare costs. As I’ve written previously, a big reason for this is that prices in the US for healthcare services are higher than elsewhere. This was nicely illustrated in a Health Affairs article from 2012. The article looked at how many physicians per capita practiced across six countries,…
In a previous post, I presented a quote from Dwight Eisenhower that foreshadows the Obamacare insurance exchanges, and argued that Obamacare is a centrist healthcare law, one that rather than socialize the healthcare system instead promotes private hospitals and private insurance companies. I even wondered whether Eisenhower might support important components of the Affordable Care Act….
In a late night phone call during a foreign policy crisis, Kennedy expressed disdain for domestic policy, showing the kind of attitude that doomed later efforts to reform the U.S. healthcare system: “It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn’t it? I mean, who gives…