CHANGE HEALTH TODAY

This was another fantastic article from NPR today, written by Elana Gordon. In this article, real Americans with real jobs and real health concerns discuss how difficult it is to find out what things cost when they finally needed to access the health care system. The couple in the story began to use an "online cost estimator offered through their insurance company." I find it sad that first-off, the insurance companies have to "estimate" anything; since they have a chargemas

This was a response, not so much a question, from an older physician I communicated with on a forum. Here's my response: hire a scribe. There's this interesting phenomenon occurring in medicine currently that I think is absolutely f*cking brilliant. Have students in higher medical education (medical/PA/NP students) sitting in the room with the doctor transcribing what the doctor does and says. Afterward, the doctor signs off on the note, and they move on to the next patient.

"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