While politicians debate how to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff that they created themselves, not many people are talking about smart ways to lower health care costs.
The idea most often mentioned in recent days is that the U.S. should raise the age when people become eligible for Medicare. It's a...
While politicians debate how to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff that they created themselves, not many people are talking about smart ways to lower health care costs.
The idea most often mentioned in recent days is that the U.S. should raise the age when people become eligible for Medicare. It's a tactic that even the least thoughtful member of Congress can understand--save money by denying care to millions of people. Easy for Washington to understand, but maybe not so easy to understand for those millions who are denied care.
Such a crude move seems foolish in light of the years of research that have shown many, many ways to lower health care costs intelligently, with far fewer adverse consequences. You can find hundreds of such studies and proposals in the journal Health Affairs and in many other medical and scholarly journals. To take one example, the current issue of Health Affairs features a study...
We've heard the statistic before, but it's useful to be reminded of the exact numbers:
Medicare costs are already expected to reach $830 billion a year by 2017. About one-quarter -- or $208 billion -- will be spent on people in the final year of their lives.
And what...
We've heard the statistic before, but it's useful to be reminded of the exact numbers:
Medicare costs are already expected to reach $830 billion a year by 2017. About one-quarter -- or $208 billion -- will be spent on people in the final year of their lives.
And what will that exorbitantly expensive care do? In many cases, not much. And sometimes it will hurt more than help.
The statistic comes from "The Cost of Dying: Simple act of feeding poses painful choices," by Lisa M. Krieger at the San Jose Mercury News. The piece is about a very small piece of medical equipment, so simple and common that we rarely stop to give it much thought--the feeding tube. It is used on one-third of demented nursing home residents who have forgotten how to eat, Krieger reports...
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of ...
I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.
In a piece in the current issue of The New Yorker, Gawande begins in an unlikely setting--at dinner on a Saturday night at The Cheesecake Factory with his two teenage daughters and three of their friends. He marvels at the restaurant. It has something for everyone--wasabi-crusted ahi tuna, and Bud Light and buffalo wings. The food is inexpensive, the place is packed, the atmosphere is Disney-like, and the staff is neatly dressed and attentive. "As for the food--can I say this without losing forever my chance of getting a reservation at Per Se?--it was delicious," Gawande writes.
Expensive restaurants serve as test kitchens for the restaurant chains, he writes, and some of the best...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage,"...
The headline was ominous.
"Survey: Employers Consider Ending Health Coverage," said the AP. The story appeared around the web, in various newspapers and websites.
Not many others covered the story, which was based on an employer survey by the consulting group Towers Watson. But I did find a similarly frightening headline at International Business Times: "Employers Look Towards Ending Health Coverage, Survey."
Boise Weekly offered its own...
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