Category Archives: Health Policy

Dramatic Primary Care Changes in Ontario

Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Healthcare systems are big and complex beasts, that are very hard to transform overnight. In the United States, for example, we have long had a system of care dominated by fee-for-service payment. In this kind of system, the more tests … Continue reading →

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Will Obamacare Reduce the Crazy Variation in Hospital Prices?

Posted on Monday, May 20, 2013

If you have been paying attention to US healthcare policy debates lately, you know that hospitals have a price problem. Walk across the street from one hospital to a competitor hospital, and you could easily find yourself facing a $30,000 increase … Continue reading →

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What Countries Are Successfully Controlling Healthcare Costs, and How Are They Doing That?

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2013

In the April issue of Health Affairs, a group of authors explored the cost-containment strategies and four “high income countries“, and try to see what they were doing that we are currently not doing in the United States. The first … Continue reading →

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Healthcare Spending and Life Expectancy

Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I am not a fan of judging the quality of a nation’s healthcare system by examining life expectancy. Many, many factors influence life expectancy that have nothing to do with healthcare. When examining life expectancy in developed countries, for example, … Continue reading →

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Hospital Pricing Insanity

Posted on Friday, May 10, 2013

Once again, lots of reports in the news about crazy variation in hospital prices in the United States, with thousands or tens of thousands of dollars difference in the price of services from one hospital to its neighbor across the … Continue reading →

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Medicare Versus Inflation: Who’s Winning Now?

Posted on Thursday, May 9, 2013

There is one thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle agree upon: the biggest threat to the future fiscal solvency of the United States is Medicare, the program that pays medical expenses for elderly and disabled Americans. For … Continue reading →

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Who Wants to Take a Pill to Prevent Breast Cancer?

Posted on Wednesday, May 8, 2013

On April 14, The United States Preventive Services Taskforce concluded that women with an elevated risk of breast cancer – who have never been diagnosed with breast cancer but whose family history and other medical factors increase their odds of … Continue reading →

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Why the Free Market Isn’t a Cure-all for Healthcare

Posted on Tuesday, May 7, 2013

It’s comforting to think that most healthcare problems in the U.S. could be solved by letting the power of an unregulated free market do its work. It’s also wishful thinking and overly simplistic, according to Peter Ubel, MD, a general … Continue reading →

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Is the Penalty for Not Getting Health Insurance Too Small to Work?

Posted on Friday, May 3, 2013

As part of Obamacare, people are required to get health insurance or pay a penalty. That’s what’s known infamously as the individual mandate. But is the penalty too small to matter? For some people, the penalty might be as low … Continue reading →

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How Anti-Alcohol Regulations Promoted…Prostitution?!

Posted on Wednesday, May 1, 2013

John “Eagle-faced” Raines had a simple goal in mind: put a big hurt into the evil saloon industry that was threatening the moral fabric of late 19th century New York State.  Low wage workers were spending huge chunks of their … Continue reading →

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