Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Time had a good article this week on the clinical necessity of an MRI to diagnose breast cancer. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1916045,00.html
I liked the article because it pointed out that our culture of "more information is better" is not always true and can lead to unnecessary services when lower cost treatments could have ...
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
Kaiser had a good interview with Chip Kahn, the president of a major for-profit U.S. hospital federation. http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Checking-In-With/Checking-in-Chip-Kahn.aspx Chip has balanced comments even about the possible success (or lack there of) of a Mayo type healthcare model. It is clear from Chip's point of view that hospitals support reform as long as ...
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Thursday, August 6th, 2009
One of the solutions being battered about in the news regarding the various health reform proposals is the use of an insurance co-op model vs. a public option insurance plan. A co-op is just a legal structure for a bunch of individuals and families to buy insurance as if they were ...
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
Eric told me last night that the surgical volume in many of the surrounding hospitals seem to be down substantially. When talking to GI docs about their endoscopies, Eric noted that they were complaining that volumes for diagnostic endoscopies had dropped from 10 a week to 2 per doctor. When ...
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574324361508092006.html
Mr. Laffer simply points out that any plan that does tie patients to their healthcare costs will ultimately create unfettered demand and promote runaway costs. Nothing in the healthcare reform lexicon today seems to focus on this fact and thus reform discussions as they exist will only further the existing cost ...
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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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