Atul Gawande wrote in The New Yorker about “hot spots” in health spending–a very few people who are using a great deal of reseources in the health-care industry. The piece is now available online, and so is his response to the criticisms thereof. Read it. It’s fabulous. One of my favorite health economists is Austin […]

Lab tests are a growing cost for most of us. My lab tests, increasingly, seem to involve a separate co-pay or co-insurance payment, though the policy I hold  says that tests from participating labs are covered. Another take on lab tests comes from Anna Wilde Mathews in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 11: “Cheryl […]

Hey, this is really interesting. You know those free drug samples people get from their doctors? There is a hidden cost: often those prescriptions are for high-priced brand-name drugs when less expensive generics are available, resulting in higher overall prescription prices, this doctor says, citing a University of Chicago Medical Center study. By Dr. Joel […]

A remarkable piece by Mary Pat Whaley on why primary care costs what it costs, on kevinmd.com, including this excerpt: “I know that patients often say ‘But he only spent 10 minutes with me.’  Checking back with the provider, I find it was typically longer.  Patients tend to underestimate the time as it goes very […]

Why it makes no sense to argue over the predictions of the health-care budget implications: http://bit.ly/evXErX Killing jobs or killing people: http://bit.ly/hvdvaD Krugman on his comments: http://nyti.ms/gNYHJr More of the Incidental Economist, this time on utilization and pay. http://bit.ly/i4T3Df Ezra Klein takes on David Brooks: http://wapo.st/flARSG

One of my favorite bloggers, who goes by the handle Maxine Udall, Girl Economist, wrote a piece not long ago about explaining the health-care marketplace to her dad. “How, I asked myself, do I explain health and health care to him? The information asymmetries; the third-party (insurance) payment that insulates purchasers from prices and prices […]

Screening and prevention are huge issues in medicine today. We all know that knowing early is better than knowing late, so we all screen: it’s like having your teeth cleaned and minding your credit score. Why not screen? Insurance pays, after all, and so…. Here’s a nuanced take on the issue, from Gary Schwitzer of […]

One of my friends is a doctor practicing in New York City, and he’s not enthusiastic about insurance companies. I asked him about his fees, and he explained that for an average office visit, he bills $200 – but he doesn’t know what he will receive from the insurance company. (He’s a specialist, though to […]

A modest roundup of cost-related news. Pregnancy blocks in individual health insurance plans — many individual health policies lack maternity-care coverage and feature costly add-ons. “…individual health insurance policies generally don’t cover most of the expenses for a normal [pregnancy] delivery, according to a report last month by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which […]

The number of people working for transparency in health care costs is growing. Drivers of this trend include the inexorable rise in costs, the results of that trend  and the health reform bill the Obama administration fought so hard for. Here’s one take on the issue: “…High health care costs create significant suffering for American […]