Why It Sometimes Doesn’t Pay, Literally, To Take Medicaid Patients
I have written a couple of pieces lately documenting the high percentage of physicians who refuse to take Medicaid patients, and some of the reasons for their refusal. One of my pieces prompted a...
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Where in the World are the ACOs?
The Affordable Care Act established several programs to promote the formation of Accountable Care Organizations. These ACOs are a relatively new way of organizing healthcare delivery, in which...
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Orthopedic Surgeons Get “F” Grade On Knowing Cost Of The Devices They Implant
A new study asks Orthopedic surgeons to guess the price of the devices they implant – “the amount your institution currently pays the vendor for the implant.” Despite a lenient grading system, in...
View ArticleWhen Physicians Pay Attentions to Costs, They Promote Public Health!
This week, my good friend Reshma Jagsi and I published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which we explain why physicians are doing their job, as physicians, when they pay attention...
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Look How Much Medicare Spends after Patients Leave the Hospital
As readers of this blog know, Medicare costs loom large in our nation’s future. If we do not find a way to control Medicare spending, it’s hard to imagine any way to remain a solvent nation. As we...
View ArticlePeople in the US Are Footing the Bill for Switzerland’s Medical Care
People have criticized The Affordable Care Act for amounting to a large transfer of wealth, from wealthy Americans to those not as well off. But the real transfer of wealth has been from United States...
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Can Behavioral Economics Lower Healthcare Costs?
Insurers can use behavioral economics, which examines why people make certain decisions and then determines how to influence said decisions, to compel members to improve their health, according to...
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A Simple Way to Save Billions of Dollars on Emergency Care
“If you insure them, they will come.” Those words might as well be the mantra of hospitals across the country, because they can expect an onslaught of customers thanks to the expansion of health...
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Are Bundled Payments the Future of US Healthcare?
I spoke recently with a reporter from the USA Today, who ended up writing a nice article on bundled payments in healthcare. I promise to return to this topic on future posts. But for now, let me whet...
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If Costs Are Unknown, Can Doctors Still Talk About Them?
I have been writing a bit lately on the need for healthcare providers to talk with their patients about healthcare costs, if for no other reason than to enable patients to determine whether they can...
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Financial Counseling for Cancer Patients: A Growth Industry?
A former student of mine who now works at the Advisory Board recently emailed me some figures her company put together, offering a snapshot of how many people are being hired in oncology practices to...
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How To Trick People Into Caring About Healthcare
In health policy circles (yes, those exist!), experts often refer to three aims for a modern healthcare system – to offer (1) universal access to (2) high quality medical care at (3) an affordable...
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Price Transparency Thoughts from a Thought Leader (And Former Student)
Here is a great piece on my former student, Jessica Harris, who now works in health care price transparency at Aetna. She visited my class this summer, and here are some of the things she taught them:...
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Are Some Life Saving Treatments Overkill?
Thanks to the popularity of medical television shows, most people have witnessed hundreds of fictional cardiac arrests in their lifetime. In most of these scenes, the patient loses consciousness, and...
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Healthcare Versus Other Social Spending
Here is another great picture from the people at Vox. It shows the United States in the middle of OECD countries, when it comes to spending on social services, like healthcare, unemployment, and the...
View ArticleRacial Disparities in Outcomes after Heart Attack Were Eliminated by Free...
High costs make it hard for many patients to afford their medications. That’s why some medical experts believe we should give important medications to patients for free, to see if that improves their...
View ArticleThe Best-Selling Biologic Drugs
Biologic drugs are a big deal for the pharmaceutical industry right now. Blockbuster chemicals for common conditions like diabetes and hypertension are largely things of the past. We’re getting pretty...
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The True Cost Of Low Drug Prices
India is not, yet, a wealthy country. Nevertheless its people experience many of the same expensive-to-treat illnesses as wealthier populations in the U.S. and Europe. Therefore the country has made a...
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The Hepatitis C Epidemic in One Picture
Hepatitis C has been in the news lately, because of amazing (and amazingly expensive) new treatments that promise to cure their life-threatening illness. While we ought to debate the expense of these...
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Malpractice Reform Won’t Save Money
Two problems loom large over the American medical care system. First, we spend outrageous amounts of money on healthcare, with too many patients receiving too many services at too high a price. Second,...
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