Q: What about ChoosingWisely.org? Won't that decrease costs?
"What about ChoosingWisely.org? Won't that decrease costs?" This question was posed by an informed commentor on a health website I frequent. I think the Choosing Wisely campaign is pretty genius. It provides clinicians with helpful guidelines on how to manage the almost infinite amount of medical knowledge that is out there. It suggests ideas on how to order labs, scans, referrals, etc. Best of all, their intentions seem pretty pure. My issue with the campaign, however, is th
Q: Then who's going to pay for medicines?
"The costs of medications are so high. Who's going to pay for people to get their meds?" This question was posed to me by someone who currently works as a nurse in a psychiatric ER. One of the reasons medication and medical device costs are so high is because Big Pharma and Big Devices drive up the prices. We know from looking at other countries that the very same medications and technologies have huge markups here comparatively. Why is that? It's partly because we are requir