Posted in Communism/Socialism, bioehtics, health care, insurance, law, markets, politics, research discussion, wealth, tagged doctor, hospital, legislation, politics, economics, New York Times, Medicaid, universal health care, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, primary care physician, Boston, health insurance, Katherine Atkinson, medical school, Patricia Sereno, American Academy of Family Physicians on April 10, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Actually, my title is a bit misleading. Not everyone has coverage…many people have not complied with the new law mandating coverage, and simply pay the fines. So the state still has many uninsured people, and now it has a rising shortage of primary care physicians.
Those of us who have taken a basic economics course saw [...]
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Posted in bioehtics, health care, insurance, markets, medicare, research discussion, wealth, tagged Aetna, Angioplasty, blood transfusion, bloomberg, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Brazil, doctor, globalization, government, health care, Health Net, hospital, insurance companies, medical care, medical malpractice, Medical Tourism, medicare, Mexico, patient, Patients Beyond Borders, price transparency, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thomas Black, Turkey, Yosef Woodman on March 26, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Medical Tourism isn’t like regular tourism. It’s a euphemism for traveling to a foreign country for more affordable medical care. And with skyrocketing health care costs in the United States, it’s becoming a reality. Thomas Black of Bloomberg News writes that insurance companies are now offering plans that include procedures in foreign countries, in exchange [...]
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Posted in employee benefits, health care, insurance, markets, psychology, research discussion, tagged America, Brian Klepper, Case Shiller Home Prices Indices, consumer driven health care, consumerism, doctor, Doctorpricing.com, double entendre, drugs.com, economics, economy, ego, HDHP, health care, healthcar, hospital, hsa, nurse, physician, prosperity, Richmond, S&P, SMA Informatics, The Doctor Weighs In, Warren Brennan, webmd.com on March 23, 2008 | 4 Comments »
People like to scoff at the idea of blending health care with shopping. Uttering the very words “consumer driven health care” sends shivers down the spines of “purists” – your local medical specialist, whose life-saving work necessitates the confidence and ego driving the indignancy of the thought. Does consumerism cheapen health care? Well, yes…if you [...]
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Posted in entrepreneurialism, health care, insurance, markets, research discussion, wealth, tagged A/R, accounts receivable, billing, bills, bounty hunting, cash network, Cheryl Hall, clinic, collections, Dallas Morning News, doctor, Doctorpricing.com, emergency room, financial, health care, Health Savings Account, hospital, hsa, insurance, John R. Thomas, McKinsey, medicine, MedSynergies, metaphor, military, patients, payer, physician, provider, third-world, uninsured, University of Texas, wealth on February 4, 2008 | 4 Comments »
A solution for America’s uninsured always seems financially unsustainable. Sure, other countries have it, but they don’t have 300 million people, vast disparities in household incomes and general wealth, a third-world country next-door neighbor with a broken fence latch, and a military.
Well, thanks to the embarassing inefficiencies present in our current health care system, the [...]
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Posted in Communism/Socialism, health care, insurance, politics, psychology, tagged Africa, aged dependency ratio, America Alone, Australia, Canada, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, economics, Europe, France, GDP, Gerald Ford, government, Greece, health care, HIV, hospital, Islam, Islamic, liabilities, Mark Steyn, Muslim, national defense, pension, SARS, Secular Humanism, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Skynet, Socialism, Terminator, Toronto, tsunami, Uncle Sam, universal health care on January 20, 2008 | 6 Comments »
In Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone,” an argument is made that big government makes its citizenry dependent and eventually helpless, in a manner of speaking. Gerald Ford had a famous quote which speaks to this: “a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Many [...]
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Posted in bioehtics, health care, insurance, markets, medicare, tagged accident, Aetna, amputation, blood type, Cerner, CIGNA, doctor, hospital, Humana, incentive, infection, insurance, Laissezfairehealthcare, medical, medicare, medicine, methicillin-resistant, mistake, National Quality Forum, never-events, patients, physician, Pitt County Memorial Hospital, pneumonia, staph, Steve Lawler, surgeon, treatment, UnitedHealthcare, Vanessa Fuhrmans, Verd-e-blog, Verden Group, Wall Street Journal, WellPoint, WSJ on January 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Vanessa Fuhrmans of the Wall Street Journal reports that insurance companies are probably going to stop paying for medical treatments made necessary by “never-events,” (list from the National Quality Forum) those major screw-ups you pray a hospital never commits. Examples include leaving a sponge in a surgery patient, amputating the wrong limb, transfusing the wrong [...]
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Posted in Communism/Socialism, health care, insurance, markets, medicare, misinformation/propaganda, politics, psychology, wealth, tagged adaptation, bigot, bigotry, blog, conservative, creed, Democrat, doctor, England, Freakonomics, free market, gender, government, health care, hospital, insurance, judgment, liberal, Medicaid, medicare, Michael Moore, race, religion, Republican, Sicko, Socialism, socialized, Stephen Dubner, UK, United Kingdom, Wall Street on January 12, 2008 | 4 Comments »
When we make snap judgments based on race, creed, religion, or gender, we are bigots. When a Wall Street trader makes a snap judgment, he can either make or lose a lot of money. The latter probably more closely resembles the original reason for the adaptation. Long ago in our development, making judgments that [...]
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Posted in health care, insurance, tagged doctor, hospital, insurance, HMO, physician, blog, health care, Canada, specialist, Frasier Institute, diagnostic, primary care physician, cardiologist, waiting time, respiratory, UnitedHealthcare, UHC, pulmonologist, x-ray, PFT, EKG, diagnosis, surgical on January 8, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In my recent post “Let’s Pick on Canada Now,” I discussed the physician shortage in Canada and how it has affected wait times for specialist treatment — which edged up over 18 weeks last year.
Unfortunately (or fortunately for this blog), I was able to compare a personal experience in the U.S. with the statistics cited [...]
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Posted in Communism/Socialism, bioehtics, corporate practices, employee benefits, health care, insurance, kidney transplant, law, misinformation/propaganda, politics, tagged attorney, blog, capitalism, CIGNA, doctors, election, government, health care, hospital, insurance, irony, John Edwards, jury, liver transplant, Medicaid, Nataline Sarkisyan, New Hampshire, plaintiff, politics, presidential, primaries, rationale, Senator John Edwards, Socialism, socialized medicine, Wall Street Journal, WSJ on January 7, 2008 | 4 Comments »
The Wall Street Journal chronicles John Edward’s attempt to tug at New Hampshire’s heart strings by telling a misleading version of the story of the death of a 17-year old leukemia patient and Cigna Corp., the insurance company that delayed coverage on her liver transplant.
Edwards, a former trial attorney, is the most extreme of capitalists, [...]
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Posted in Communism/Socialism, bioehtics, entrepreneurialism, health care, law, markets, medicare, politics, research discussion, wealth, tagged African, American, anti-lock brakes, Ashok Roy, automotive, BBC, Benz, budget, cardiology, competition, congress, consumer, contraception, costs, cruise control, death sentence, doctor, economics, electronic stability control, ESC, family doctor, frontier, general practitioner, government, Harvard, health care, Heritage Foundation, HHS, hospital, infrared camera, innovation, internist, James May, Jeremy Clarkson, laboratory, lobbyist, mainstream, marketplace, medical, medicare, MedPAC, Mercedes, metaphor, moratorium, mortality, night vision, nurse, orthopedic, patient, physician, privilege, prototype, public, Regina Herzlinger, research, Richard Hammond, rural, S-Class, safety, satnav, seatbelt, sedan, specialty hospital, status-quo, study, Top Gear, unfair competition, wealth on December 26, 2007 | 1 Comment »
There’s a really cool show on BBC America called “Top Gear.” It’s a witty, irreverent, brutally honest car show hosted by three dry-witted Brits: Jeremy Clarkson (blog here), Richard Hammond, and James May. Last season they road tested the new Mercedes S-Class (video clip). The S-Class is the big, expensive standard example [...]
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