I posted my thoughts on the long Steven Brill healthcare story in Time, and now Tabitha M. Powledge at On Science Blogs has put...
Category: health care
I posted my thoughts on the long Steven Brill healthcare story in Time, and now Tabitha M. Powledge at On Science Blogs has put together a nice roundup of comments from other bloggers and pundits, where you can see a range of opinions. Powledge summarizes Brill's 26,000-word article as a tale of "greed, oligopoly, greed, monopoly, and greed."
Health policy expert Uwe Reinhardt is surprised that Americans are "shocked, just shocked" to learn that health care squeezes middle- and upper-middle-class patients "for every penny of savings or assets" they can get. But that misses the point: We might know that, but Brill made clear that the problem is even worse than many of us...
On Dec. 13, I posted about the lack of efforts to be smart about controlling health-care costs. Some politicians have proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare, which would simply lop off millions of people from the...
On Dec. 13, I posted about the lack of efforts to be smart about controlling health-care costs. Some politicians have proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare, which would simply lop off millions of people from the health care they are now expecting to get.
I encouraged reporters to get out and explore other alternatives, to remind readers that a crude move like raising Medicare is not the only way to cut costs. I relied heavily on an Op-Ed in The New York Times as an example of the kind of thing I was talking about. It was written by one David B. Agus, identified as a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California and the author of "The End of Illness....
Only Tabitha M. Powledge, the author of On Science Blogs, could figure out a way to package a spy scandal, a man in a vegetative state, and legalized marijuana into one post.
You'll find here a variety of links to Petraeus posts, and even a reference to Restoration...
Only Tabitha M. Powledge, the author of On Science Blogs, could figure out a way to package a spy scandal, a man in a vegetative state, and legalized marijuana into one post.
You'll find here a variety of links to Petraeus posts, and even a reference to Restoration drama. And the legalization of marijuana, she reports, should lead to growth in research--that is, research on marijuana, not researchers on marijuana. That, in turn, is likely to provide employment for science writers, who will need to explain it.
-Paul Raeburn
24Oct 2012
"In most areas of the economy," writes James Surowiecki in the Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker, "free market principles insure that products and services keep...
"In most areas of the economy," writes James Surowiecki in the Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker, "free market principles insure that products and services keep improving, and that consumers get better and better deals." Yesterday's announcement by Apple of new and better products, some at the same prices as their now-obsolete predecessors, is an example.
But in this excellent, brief analysis of health care reform, he notes that the free market "falters when it comes to paying for bypass surgery or chemotherapy," and he points to what he says is a classic article published by Kenneth Arrow nearly 50 years ago. [That's my link, not his, and I think it's correct; he should have linked to the article himself.] Among other things,...
On Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill that could save $200 billion in health care costs over the next 15 years. This seems to me to be an important development, worthy of national coverage,...
On Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill that could save $200 billion in health care costs over the next 15 years. This seems to me to be an important development, worthy of national coverage, because the Massachusetts law was signed by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and because it was the model for President Obama's health care reform legislation.
Yet the coverage seems spotty even in Massachusetts. From The Boston Globe and many others, we mostly get short pieces that report the potential savings and otherwise quote partisans about whether the bill is a good idea or not. It's not easy to find any information on the bill itself, or how the cost control measures would work....
I'm in the airport, on my way home from the annual meeting in Atlanta of the Association of Health Care Journalists. I saw a lot of old friends, met new friends, and established in-person friendships with many Twitter and Facebook friends. (Most overheard line at meetings: "It's so nice to meet you in person...
I'm in the airport, on my way home from the annual meeting in Atlanta of the Association of Health Care Journalists. I saw a lot of old friends, met new friends, and established in-person friendships with many Twitter and Facebook friends. (Most overheard line at meetings: "It's so nice to meet you in person!") As usual, some of the best discussions occurred over a drink or at dinner, when we compared notes about stories, editors, the financial health of old and new media, and making a living as a freelancer. More than 600 of AHCJ's members turned out for the meeting.
Former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter kicked things off with a report on the health-care work the Carter Center is doing in Africa, including the near...
In an article in JAMA headlined, "What Patients Really Want From Health Care," Allan S. Detsky says, "patients primarily focus on relieving illness and symptoms rather than disease prevention."
Interesting if...
In an article in JAMA headlined, "What Patients Really Want From Health Care," Allan S. Detsky says, "patients primarily focus on relieving illness and symptoms rather than disease prevention."
Interesting if true, as we say. But what is the basis for this assertion? Detsky has an M.D. and a Ph.D., but this is not a scientific article. It's an opinion piece. And it reads like journalism to me, which is why I'm paying attention to it here. But, sadly, it appears to be based mainly on Detsky's preconceived beliefs, as far as we can tell. Little of it is footnoted, and JAMA doesn't do links.
If patients focus on treating illness rather than prevention,...
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...
My recent post criticizing the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting for not including any health or science reporters on its team has drawn a thoughtful response from David Westphal, the center's editor. I thought the issues raised in his comment, and addressed in my reply, were interesting enough that I should move them up here to the top of the stack, for those who might not go back to the original post.
Here's Westphal's comment:
David Westphal Says: ...
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