Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Take a look at this article from MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32275652/ns/health-health_care/
In this article, the National Institute of Health recognizes that certain activities such as preventive testing do not necessarily save money. The takeaway for the consumer has to be that preventive testing is not necessarily the answer for health care cost containment. That being ...
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
As a patient and healthcare consumer, you can get caught in a trap that can cost you a lot of money. First as background, many medical services have two bills--the doctor bill and the facility (i.e. hospital or surgery center) bill. Some doctors who perform procedures--such as gastroenterologists that ...
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Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Anytime you read an article about healthcare or hear a news story about healthcare, think about it in terms of how it will affect (1) Access, (2) Quality and (3) Cost. Healthcare is a 3-legged stool and these are the legs.
When you are deciding for yourself if a change ...
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
See this recent article posted by the Associated Press: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HEALTH_INSURANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-09-24-13-36-36
Consumer directed health plans jumped by 50% to 18% of total plans in the AP survey. Employers are finding consumer directed plans or some sort of risk sharing to be their only option for controlling costs. In either case, Compass provides the plan design ...
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Thursday, July 31st, 2008
This posting is the conclusion in my series "The 7 Causes of Healthcare Overutilization." Reasons #6 and #7 focus on patients and their behavior.
6. Marketing to Patients
Earlier I wrote that the pharmaceutical industry spends $7 billion marketing to physicians. Well, they also spend $4 billion marketing directly to patients. These ...
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
In a continuation of this series on the reasons for healthcare overutilization, let's examine advertising, malpractice and technology:
3. Marketing to Physicians
The pharmaceutical industry as a whole spends $10,000 on each and every physician in America marketing the latest medications—more than $7 billion annually. Physicians are often faced with a decision on which ...
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Friday, July 25th, 2008
The average employee health insurance cost for family coverage is $12,106.[i] That cost--whether it is in insurance premiums or medical claims paid by the employer--increased an average of 6% in 2007 and many employers are facing increases as high as 30% this year.[ii] To put that cost in perspective, a family ...
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
The lead article in the Sunday New York Times on June 29th was on the high cost ($1,000 per scan) and questionable efficacy of cardiac CT scans that can visualize the coronary arteries of the heart. However, the article goes on to quote cardiologists and other experts on both sides of ...
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