Critical Decisions is officially released right after Labor Day. Here is a Q&A on Duke Today to whet your appetite in the meantime.
Q: We’ve probably all been there. You are sitting in a paper gown as a doctor describes your prognosis. Sometimes the next steps are treatable and straightforward. Other times, decisions can literally be a matter of life and death. How can you make the best decision with your doctor? …(Read more here)
Should Chemotherapy Cost More on Hot Days?
It was 93 degrees and humid. Jimmy Lawrence put his first five quarters into the vending machine and selected a Coke. The machine refused to give him his beverage. Because the temperature was more than 90 degrees, the computer program within the vending machine had raised the price to $1.50.
Is that fair pricing? …(Read more and view comments at Forbes)
Hospital Pricing and Irrational Thinking
The gynecologist made several incisions and inserted the laparoscope. With the help of her surgical team of nurses, students and anesthesiologists, she removed the patient’s uterus, which had been bleeding uncontrollably for the past six months despite aggressive medical therapy. The price tag of the procedure? Around $6,000.
Meanwhile in a nearby hospital, another gynecologist removes another woman’s uterus, in a procedure no more complicated or time consuming than the first one… (Read the rest and view comments at Forbes)
Who Should Decide Who Gets a Transplant?
Watch this segment from HuffPo Live on two children denied transplants because they were not deemed mentally capable enough to benefit. Two angry moms are fighting back. Love to hear your thoughts.
Why We Need More Twelve-Year-Olds Teaching Health Policy
I come from an ardent Republican family. Suspicion of government, you could say, runs in my genes. No surprise then that the first time my parents and siblings heard about Obama’s individual health insurance mandate, they were against it… (Read more and view comments at The Human Capital Blog)
What Does Health Insurance Consolidation Mean for You?
Listen to this Marketplace report on consolidation in the world of health insurance. It is an interesting report, and also the first public acknowledgment that I am, gulp, a Business Professor!
It's Physician Pay, Stupid!
In 2006, health-care expenditures in the U.S. rose 6%, a rate of growth significantly higher than inflation and one that, if sustained, would lead to a doubling in health-care spending in a mere dozen years. Some of that extra spending was a function of more doctors doing more things to more people—an increasing number of hip replacements, for example, for senior citizens hobbled by degenerative joints… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
How Screwed Up Does Health Care Need to Get Before We'll Fix It?
“We need to be screwed!” Not altogether surprising words to spill out of a college student’s mouth. But this particular student was not talking about sex. She was discussing the U.S. health-care system–more specifically what she thought it would take for our two political parties to come together to find a … (Read the rest and view comments at Forbes)
Inappropriate Touching in the Doctor's Office
I felt a woman’s uterus without her permission. How this happened, and why I thought I had done the right thing at the time, tells us something important about medical education and shows us why doctor/patient interactions often play out like conversations between earthlings and aliens… (Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)
Hazards of High Deductibles?
See this nice article on high deductible health insurance, by a reporter I spoke to, if I remember correctly, while walking my dog in one of Chapel Hill’s nicest parks.