Review: "Debate Sharpens Over Single-Payer Health Care, But What Is It Exactly?" - NPR
This was a post by Julie Rovner on 1/22/2016 in collaboration with Kaiser Health News. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/22/463976098/debate-sharpens-over-single-payer-health-care-but-what-is-it-exactly This short article should be required reading for every American because it clarifies the different types of healthcare paradigms we're currently using. "A single-payer system is not the same thing as socialized medicine. In a truly socialized medicine system, t
Q: Why can't doctors just leave?
This is a follow-up post to my review of The New York Times article today. In a nutshell, we can leave. But it's a painstaking process that most of the public doesn't know about. Let's break it into two parts: quitting and on-boarding. Quitting: for most states there is, at a minimum, a period of time required by the medical licensing board for us to give notice to our patients before we close our doors. That may take 30 days for those of us working in the outpatient (clinic)
Review: "Medicaid May Soon Pay for Some Inpatient Addiction Treatment" – NPR
This story was written by Ben Allen for NPR yesterday. Substance abuse treatment is sometimes a difficult subject to discuss because it is strongly influenced by both biology and psychology. People often wonder why they don't "just stop." That question has implications across the board and treatment is often a mix of biological and psychological approaches that oftentimes are misunderstood by those holding the opposite philosophy. With that said, the best way to make the sit
Q: Why isn't single payer an option?
"Why isn't single payer an option?" This question was posted in a forum I perused after reading The New York Times article from my previous post. Single payer doesn't work because it makes the fundamental assumption that a third party – be it government, private company, neighbor down the street – knows the best medical option for a patient. In other words, when you have a patient (A) and a provider (B), the single-payer system says that rando (C) gets to make a health care d
Review: "The Experts Were Wrong About the Best Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care"
This was an illustrated article posted by Kevin Quealy and Margo Sanger-Katz for the New York Times today. I find stories about economics and behavior to be fascinating. I've been in practice for four-and-a-half years, and I've incorporated more and more behavioral principles into what I do. I noticed that in creating the ACA, they too put in behavioral hurdles to incentivize people to buy health care. But this article proves what I suspected all along: the health care indust
Q: So how are you different from all the other universal health care movements?
"So how are you different from all the other universal health care movements?" This was the question posed by my colleague and friend as we researched the dozens of companies and groups who have proposed health care reform plans. Here's a list of how P.S.Y.C.H. is different: 1. Nationwide reach I fully believe that even if a state managed to pull off a universal access system, it would ultimately fail because it's surrounded by states without it. America has this interesting
Review: "Many Low-Income Workers Say 'No' to Health Insurance" – New York Times
The article was written by Stacy Cowley and published on the NYTimes app today. The thumbnail says, "The Affordable Care Act requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer insurance, but many find few low-income employees will buy it." This is New York Times reporting at its best. They do a really good job of talking with real people and getting a real perspective. In this case, it's from the viewpoint of a boss who is offering benefits (which I just did in m
Q: You're a doctor; why do you care so much about this? You're making bank!
"You're a doctor; why do you care so much about this? You're making bank!" I get this comment a lot. Here's the long and the short of it: yes, physicians make lots of money. Yes, some salaries in medicine are highly inflated compared to others. But rather than go down the "we've sacrificed years of our lives for this" pathway, I want you to remember that physicians are people. We get sick. We have families. We hate knuckleheaded people in positions of power telling us what to
Review: "The Tangle of Coordinated Health Care" – The New York Times
Health care coordination deserves a big ole Southern "bless your heart." Read The New York Times article by Paula Span. It's a grand intention to create health care coordinators and service representatives to help walk people through the hurdles of our health care delivery system. But these people only serve to make a convoluted process more confusing. The rules regarding HIPAA and privacy and the increasing burden of litigious documentation means that there is a lot of hesit
Review: "More Whistleblowers Say Health Plans Are Gouging Medicare" – NPR
I'm more concerned that people are surprised by this than I am that it is actually happening. Read the NPR Blog post. Medicare is a bloated, inefficient system that has so many rules and regulations that I don't even try to think about it because it would ruin my day and keep me from the joys of patient care. Medicaid and the VA system are equally as bad. Good intentions, terrible execution. It's strange to me that we'd create government programs, then turn around and pay a p