Health policy and public health

4,357 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 105

Fragmentation is behind health care’s biggest problems

December 11, 2015Dec 11, 201526

My friend Jeremy went to an emergency room with belly pain, and soon learned he'd been blessed with a kidney stone. The staff summoned a urologist, but none was available, so they sent him home with a pain prescription. Continuing…

My friend Jeremy went to an emergency room with belly pain, and soon learned he’d been blessed with a kidney stone. The staff summoned a urologist, but none was available, so they sent him home with a pain prescription. Continuing nevertheless to writhe in agony, Jeremy phoned urologists and learned to his dismay there were only three in the region who accepted his insurance, and none at all in his …

Health policy

Why is UnitedHealthcare thinking of bailing on Obamacare?

Brian C. Joondeph, MD

December 7, 2015Dec 7, 201598

UnitedHealthcare (UHC), the nation’s largest health insurer, will likely pull out of Obamacare in 2017. Citing high costs and huge potential losses, they warned that 2016 will probably be their last year offering health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. Is…

Is this another example of greedy insurance companies with fat cat CEOs gouging the system? Or are economic realities interfering with the “hope and change” of Obamacare?

UHC isn’t really selling insurance. Instead …

Health policy

5 health questions every presidential candidate should answer

Robert Pearl, MD

December 2, 2015Dec 2, 20154

With fewer than 100 days until the first primaries, the leading candidates have received ample airtime to address the important issues our nation faces. But even though health care accounts for around 18 percent of our nation’s GDP and consumes close to half of the total tax revenue collected by the federal government, their silence on providing solutions to the most pressing health care challenges our nation faces continues with …

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Health policy

How butterflies are bad omens for health care

Rocky Bilhartz, MD

November 26, 2015Nov 26, 2015

After reading my latest post about conflicts of interest in health care, my wife suggested that I write a piece about butterflies. Something pretty, she said. Natural. Peaceful. Since hostility is never my goal, I thought I’d give it a…

After reading my latest post about conflicts of interest in health care, my wife suggested that I write a piece about butterflies. Something pretty, she said. Natural. Peaceful.

Since hostility is never my goal, I thought I’d give it a try.

I read for an entire evening on butterflies — their life cycle, behavior, mechanisms for protection, and how different cultures view them. All I could keep thinking about was how much my grandmother …

Health policy

Value to patients and value to society: How can doctors balance the tension?

Joshua Liao, MD

November 19, 2015Nov 19, 201526

Amid ongoing health care transformation, clinicians will increasingly face the tension that the late physician and health services researcher John M. Eisenberg, MD, MACP, described over 30 years ago: providing high-value care with simultaneous commitments to patients and society. Physicians…

Physicians have always been charged as patient agents to advocate for patients’ best interests. Simultaneously, however, they are tasked with considering the societal good by using resources wisely. While these commitments often …

Health policy

What health care can learn from forest preservation

Birju Rao

October 15, 2015Oct 15, 2015

Health care providers and patients alike have been physically and emotionally frustrated when dealing with health care’s rising cost. Legislative restrictions based on cost often defy logic and common sense in a way that most people have never encountered. But what is it specifically about the health care market that gives us these fundamentally perverse situations? Many point fingers at insurance companies, big pharma, hospitals owned by private equity firms, …

Health policy

We need full transparency for hospital chargemaster prices. Here’s why.

Peter Ubel, MD

October 13, 2015Oct 13, 201510

If she had been eligible for Medicare, the hospital would have charged the government $10,000 for the services it provided to her, with Medicare picking up most of the tab. But lacking insurance, she was billed directly from the hospital,…

That 1,200 percent markup is extreme. But out of the 50 U.S. hospitals with the largest price markups, 49 are for-profit …

Health policy

I just turned 26. Here’s what I learned while buying health insurance.

Augie Lindmark

October 5, 2015Oct 5, 20152

I cracked a Budweiser and flipped on Spotify radio for what I was told would be a challenge. On my computer screen, Minnesota’s health insurance exchange website waited expectantly, to which I submitted the Holy Trinity of health information — age, date of birth, and tobacco usage — and waited. The next page loaded slowly, evidence of the voluminous information that would soon surface. I had hoped for simplicity, instead, …

Health policy

What will be the consequence of health care consolidation?

Peter Ubel, MD

October 4, 2015Oct 4, 201513

The federal government is currently debating whether the big six health insurance companies in the U.S. will soon become the big four. Aetna and Humana have announced plans to merge, as have Anthem and Cigna. The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association strongly oppose the mergers, saying they will reduce competition in consumer markets.

Meanwhile, health care provider groups continue to consolidate. Small hospitals either get swallowed up by …

Physician voices

It’s time for physicians to regain their voice

Meeta Shah, MD

October 1, 2015Oct 1, 20158

When was it that we stopped respecting ourselves and our profession? When did we decide that quietly smoldering or complaining to one another is better than standing up as a single entity for what we know is right? How did we allow misconceptions and distrust of physicians to grow? For outside forces to dictate what is best for our patients and take …

Health policy

Less regulation in health care. Please.

Rocky Bilhartz, MD

September 14, 2015Sep 14, 201510

Pharmaceutical drugs cost too much. The new ones are always so expensive. Hence, we need more regulations. And, the government should impose them. Set price limits. Cap drugmaker profits. This will make it better for all of us. The paternalism…

Pharmaceutical drugs cost too much. The new ones are always so expensive.

Hence, we need more regulations. And, the government should impose them. Set price limits. Cap drugmaker profits. This will make it better for all of us. The paternalism of our government should be the strongest when we are ill. Because we may need that medicine.

The government should regulate things more so we can get it cheaper.

Case in point. One new medication …

Read more…

Less regulation in health care. Please.

Health policy

This doctor is on a mission to take back medicine

Rocky Bilhartz, MD

August 25, 2015Aug 25, 201552

I’m taking back medicine. If you didn’t know it left or that someone stole it, I’ll give you a pass. Medicine has been disguised for a long time now. And, when you leave the scene in camouflage, you often go…

I’m taking back medicine.

If you didn’t know it left or that someone stole it, I’ll give you a pass. Medicine has been disguised for a long time now. And, when you leave the scene in camouflage, you often go unnoticed.

Medicine is supposed to be the science or practice of diagnosing, treating, and preventing disease. I love medicine. There’s so much to learn. Lots …

Physician voices

What laryngitis taught this surgeon about disrupting health care

Kathryn A. Hughes, MD

August 23, 2015Aug 23, 20152

Smitty greets Sully as they meet to head to work, “Hey there, Sully! How’s your wife?” Sully answers, “Oh, geez. She’s up in bed with laryngitis.” Then Smitty says, “Laryngitis?! That damned Greek!” As you may have guessed, I am…

Smitty greets Sully as they meet to head to work, “Hey there, Sully! How’s your wife?” Sully answers, “Oh, geez. She’s up in bed with laryngitis.” Then Smitty says, “Laryngitis?! That damned Greek!”

As you may have guessed, I am nursing a case of laryngitis, my voice muted and strained. This time, it has not stopped me from attending to my work responsibilities or other activities. It has required some adjustments though, …

Physician voices

7 ways physicians can improve health care quality

Robert Pearl, MD

August 16, 2015Aug 16, 201533

Patients want to receive health care that is of the highest quality. Physicians want to provide it. But what is “high-quality health care?” On that, few agree. Ask most Americans and they’re unsure where to find it. They know they…

Patients want to receive health care that is of the highest quality. Physicians want to provide it. But what is “high-quality health care?” On that, few agree.

Ask most Americans and they’re unsure where to find it. They know they want to be kept healthy, have rapid access to personalized care whenever they need it and be charged only what they can afford.

Ask the leaders of the national medical and surgical …

Health policy

The Hunger Games of health care is here. Who will be our Katniss?

Regina Druz, MD

August 13, 2015Aug 13, 20156

"Doctor, the patient is complaining," said my secretary in a hush-hush voice. “She has been waiting for 30 minutes.” “She” had an appointment for later in the afternoon but phoned our office about 2 hours before the scheduled time, and…

“Doctor, the patient is complaining,” said my secretary in a hush-hush voice. “She has been waiting for 30 minutes.”

“She” had an appointment for later in the afternoon but phoned our office about 2 hours before the scheduled time, and requested to come earlier. No emergency. No acute complaints. We always try to accommodate, and pushed to “squeeze” her in. The earlier time, …

Health policy

Health care could use someone like Donald Trump. Wait, what?

Suneel Dhand, MD

August 13, 2015Aug 13, 201510

He’s loud, brash and audacious. He’s been a celebrity for decades, a well-known businessman and reality TV star. And anyone who is even remotely following the news at the moment knows he’s also dominating headlines with his presidential run. I’m…

Health policy

In defense of single-payer: How it would reduce administrative waste

Adam Gaffney, MD

August 4, 2015Aug 4, 201518

Would a single-payer national health program, at the end of the day, truly be sleeker and slimmer than our bloated and fragmented semi-private system? Not according to Dr. Michel Accad, who takes on this important single-payer talking point in his…

Given that savings from reduced expenditures on billing and overhead are a core argument that single-payer advocates (myself among them) employ to advance …

Health policy

Do doctors really hate Obamacare?

Bob Doherty

July 19, 2015Jul 19, 201563

Anti-Obamacare critics often claim that “every” physician they know hates Obamacare. For instance, pediatric neurosurgeon and GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson told Fox News that “he's spoken to hundreds of doctors throughout the country about the Affordable Care Act,…

Anti-Obamacare critics often claim that “every” physician they know hates Obamacare. For instance, pediatric neurosurgeon and GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson told Fox News that “he’s spoken to hundreds of doctors throughout the country about the Affordable Care Act, and not one of them ‘liked’ President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.”

Doctors hate Obamacare, it’s alleged, because it …

Read more…

Do doctors really hate Obamacare?

Health policy

Do these 3 things to save the AHRQ from extinction

Michael L. Millenson

July 17, 2015Jul 17, 20154

Congress is infected with the budget-cutting bug, and building an effective immune system requires political savvy. Sometimes, it’s simple (“We bomb terrorists” or “We process Social Security checks”), but sometimes an agency struggles. Case in point: AHRQ. A House subcommittee…

A House subcommittee recently voted to eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as of Oct. 1, 2015, the start of fiscal 2016. If you hadn’t heard the news or aren’t …

Health policy

Will single-payer really reduce administrative waste?

Michel Accad, MD

July 16, 2015Jul 16, 201537

In contrast to the expected shortage of tens of thousands of physicians, there appears to be an abundance of health care administrators, at least judging by graph above. The originators of the graph -- economists and physician-activists at Physicians for…

In contrast to the expected shortage of tens of thousands of physicians, there appears to be an abundance of health care administrators, at least judging by graph above.

The originators of the graph — economists and physician-activists at Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) — invoke the administrative bloat as reason to promote a single payer system. With a single …

Health policy and public health

Articles, page 105

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