With its expansion of Medicaid eligibility, the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was supposed to go a long way towards providing healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. That accomplishment was dealt a large blow by the Supreme Court, when it forbade the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage. Nevertheless, many states…
A new report out of Massachusetts concludes that people there are paying more for their health insurance, at the same time that the services covered by their insurance are declining. Here’s a picture from a Kaiser summary of the report: The Kaiser story also points out that a big problem in Massachusetts is that people…
Joanne Reed’s breast cancer was discovered at an early stage, early enough that her doctors would be able to remove the tumor with surgery (either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy) and then, with a touch of chemo, she would face a decent chance of living out her life without a recurrence. But then Reed’s cancer…
For very good reason, there has been lots of attention on healthcare prices in the United States lately. We spend more on healthcare in this country than anywhere else in the world, and we also charge higher prices for the healthcare we offer. Physicians in the United States make much more than their counterparts elsewhere…
Ten years ago, my tennis partner suffered a stroke. He was a sixty-year-old at the time, working to move up into the top ten players in his age group. In the country! You could not have found a healthier sixty-year-old. He played tennis three-plus hours a day, scampering across the court like a hyperactive adolescent. …
In a recent post, I pointed you towards a very nice article by Jason deBruyn about controversies over the role of nurse practitioners in providing primary care. A recent study in the journal Health Affairs showed that when states loosen up their regulations over what nurse practitioners can do, the percent of people receiving primary…
In a recent Forbes post, I wrote about geographical variation in healthcare expenses, and pointed out that a lot of this variation occurs after people leave hospitals. That’s when people end up in nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and the like. Well it turns out, not only is there great variation in these expenses, but these…
I have been writing quite a bit about healthcare price transparency lately. And so have a lot of other people. Many of us have been pointing to insane variation in how much hospitals charge for their services. Walk across the street, and you might see the price of a routine healthcare service rise two or threefold. But…
I’m back to blogging again, and thought I’d return to a topic I have blogged about recently: expanding the role of non-physicians in primary care. A very talented journalist in North Carolina, Jason deBruyn, wrote a nice piece which I am indenting below, laying out some of the controversies. Debate settles in on costs versus…
I am very fortunate to have never been sued. That is not necessarily because of my amazing ability as a physician. I always practiced in Veterans Affairs medical centers, where my status as a federal employee meant I would not get sued by my patients. I also had an incredibly appreciative patient population. But I…