Are you one of the many Americans facing potentially high healthcare costs? If you have a high deductible health plan, or even a medium deductible one; if you are expected to fork over substantial copays for medical care—I’ve got good news for you. There are potentially a lot of healthcare bargains out there, if you’re […]
Brand-name chemotherapy is often incredibly expensive, in excess of $100,000 per patient. Sometimes there are excellent generic alternatives, but many oncologists are hesitant to prescribe generics because such prescriptions cost them money. For many medicines, you see, oncologists receive a 6% markup, meaning when they infuse a patient with a $10,000 monthly course of chemotherapy, […]
I’m excited to announce that my book is now available through Audible, to accompany you on all those long commutes you are no longer making to your job every day. Sigh… But seriously, I think the topic of this book is more relevant than ever, and hope that having another way to “read” Sick to […]
In my most recent post, I describe several psychologic and economic phenomena impeding our ability to rein in the cost of end-of-life care. In brief, people with nothing to lose, who don’t trust doctors recommending they receive hospice care, and who face few economic consequences for receiving expensive care – they aren’t likely to put the […]
Six-year old Kimmy Merrill fell into an abandoned well outside of Oswega, Pennsylvania, her cries unnoticed in the remote countryside until her mother Susan wandered within earshot of the well. Unable to save Kimmy even with the help of local firefighters, Susan pleaded for rescue workers to dig a hole parallel to the well. Desperate […]
According to a recent CDC survey, one in four cancer survivors struggle to pay their medical bills. An even higher number worry about whether they’ll be able to scrounge up the money to pay off their out-of-pocket healthcare costs. I’m quite comfortable blaming the healthcare industry, writ large, for this problem. Healthcare prices in the United […]
Check out my recent interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education about the rising costs of education and healthcare: For decades, higher education has come under public scrutiny for rising costs. But there is at least one other sector that seems to feel even more heat from policy makers and ire from the public. That […]
When it comes to healthcare spending, the U.S. is without peer. Consider the 20 countries making up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (called the OECD by the cool kids). The organization includes countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, and the Czech Republic. Oh also Finland, France, Germany…you get the idea. It also […]
The US isn’t the only country struggling with the high price of prescription drugs. A decade ago, Germany was facing rapidly rising medication prices. In 2011, it struck back, with a law regulating the price of new medications. Here’s how that law works, and what it has meant for whether Germans have access to new […]
Medication prices in the US have gone from wild to insane; from expensive to outright unaffordable. But a tripling in prices could save us all a lot of money. Here’s how that would work. It’s a policy known as external reference pricing. The idea is simple. First, the US government would look at how much […]