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What Is Maddening about Pharmaceutical Prices?
Imagine that you are gasping for breath, literally on the verge of death. Then someone injects you with a medicine and – miracle! – you are perfectly healthy again. Would you pay $300 for that injection? The treatment is epinephrine; your illness was a life-threatening allergy. And that $300 price? That reflects a six-fold increase…
Shameful Nation
Want to go bankrupt from medical bills? You should move to the United States, where that fate is WAY more possible than in other wealthy countries: #WeNeedToFixThis
Where Your Paycheck Is Going
If you are wondering why your hourly wage or your salary aren’t rising as quickly as you like, or why your bank account at the end of the year hasn’t grown as much as you intended, don’t forget to take into account just how much more you are probably paying out-of-pocket for the medical care…
Would the Founding Fathers Approve of a Sugar Tax?
Recently Mayor Michael Bloomberg learned that his Big Gulp ban had been blocked by a state Supreme Court judge for arbitrarily targeting these consumer goods without a legal rationale. Determined to combat the obesity epidemic, Bloomberg will no doubt appeal this decision. But he shouldn’t. Instead, he should look back at the history of alcohol prohibition…
Missed Opportunities to Help Lower Patient Out-of-Pocket Expenses
Here is a Kaiser Health News/NPR story on our research on healthcare cost conversations in doctor’s offices. Talking about money is never easy. But when doctors are reluctant to talk about medical costs, patients’ health can be undermined. A study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs explores the opportunities that are often missed in the exam room. Patients…
On Our Way to Being a Smoke-Free Nation
Great picture from a NEJM article showing a continuing reduction in American tobacco consumption, a decline that accelerated during the Obama years. (Irony – Obama was a smoker during much of that time!) My question – What would this look like if you added in all the people using e-cigarettes?