You know the one: “How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way On Health Care“, by Karen Tumulty and Michael Scherer. It’s worth reading if you’re not familiar with the issue, but there are a couple of aspects important to patients that the authors don’t quite spell out. First, this bit: But there’s a dilemma: policymakers want [...]
Thu, October 22 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Kevin, MD has a reader take from an anonymous medical student: One of the ideas that comes up in the search for explanations of high healthcare costs is the so-called “Moral Hazard”—the idea that insured patients are more likely to agree to unnecessary procedures because they don’t pay for them directly. Not everyone thinks it [...]
Tue, June 30 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
I confess a moment of delight when I saw the headline in my RSS reader: Patient Power for Chronic Illness. Then I saw the byline: John Goodman, that guy who thinks anybody with access to an ER has health insurance. Among his pet notions is the health-care savings account – HSA – as a way [...]
Thu, February 19 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
I was all set to take down this article by Virginia Postrel in the March issue of The Atlantic, but Merrell Goozner has done a better a job than I could have. Goozner’s post is long, but worth reading in full. Goozner makes clear that Postrel is wrong wrong wrong on the science, but she’s [...]
Tue, February 17 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Via Krugman via NOW! Blog, from the WSJ: The drug and medical-device industries are mobilizing to gut a provision in the stimulus bill that would spend $1.1 billion on research comparing medical treatments, portraying it as the first step to government rationing. [...]The administration hopes to expand coverage while limiting use of treatments that don’t [...]
Wed, February 11 2009 » Uncategorized » 3 Comments
My distrust of economists is latent theme on this blog, but I think there may be something to this study: Any student of Econ 101 knows that economists measure costs by opportunity costs, meaning everything that is given up to get something else. Time spent interacting with the medical system could be used for other [...]
Mon, February 9 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
One of things that surprised me when I entered the blogosphere was the number of doctors billing themselves as “free-market” advocates. Do they teach economics in med school? If so, they don’t do a good job of it. For example, Kevin links to an op-ed by a “free-market advocate” physician named Paul Hsieh. The op-ed [...]
Sat, January 10 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
A doc named Jonathan Glauser somehow got a rant on the lousy state of primary care published in the Emergency Medicine News, raising a bit of a stink (and then some). I agree with his critics that this piece is mostly a failure, but a lot of the problems he describes in primary care are [...]
Tue, December 16 2008 » Uncategorized » No Comments
A novel crime against decency by Duncan Cross
