The misguided expectation of eliminating pain
I am against all forms of bodily pain, both foreign and domestic. I wish the world were pain-free. When I am suffering from even a routine headache, I want immediate relief just like everyone else. The medical approach to pain control has changed dramatically even during my own career. When I started practicing a few decades ago, the strategy was pain reduction. We gave narcotics for very few indications such as kidney stones, heart attacks and severe abdominal pain after a surgeon evaluated the patient. (The reason for this was so the surgeon could obtain an accurate assessment of the patient’s belly before pain medicin...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 31, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/michael-kirsch" rel="tag" > Michael Kirsch, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Medications Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Serving the underserved: a win-win situation
Medical school was a difficult adjustment for me. Coming from a blue-collar background and lacking a medical pedigree, I did not relate to most of my classmates, and I made very few friends.
That changed when I met J., a second-generation physician-to-be without the competitive guile or sense of entitlement implicit in most of the medical students I had met. With a generous personality undoubtedly sculpted by the experience of motherhood, she came across to me as someone who generally cared for others. I could tell that she opted for this career with pure intentions in mind. She modeled what I had thought this calling was ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 28, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/cory-michael" rel="tag" > Cory Michael, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Primary Care Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
Name Your Price MRI Startup Coming to an Imaging Center Near You
Medmo, a unique name-your-price imaging service, is helping patients access affordable MRIs and other imaging services by matching them to imaging centers within their budget. The New York-based startup’s platform is designed to help patients with high deductibles or no insurance find low-cost scans and imaging centers fill up empty slots in their schedule.Medmo could be paving the way for a whole new pricing concept in the healthcare industry. Since the platform works by connecting patients with imaging centers that might have last minute openings, users can pay discounted rates as low as $225 for an MRI and $200 for ...
Source: radRounds - July 19, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
To give good value, Medicaid needs help
Medicaid — the program that provides funding for adults, seniors (along with Medicare), children and people who are blind or disabled who can’t pay for their own health care — is expensive. It is painfully expensive. The program, along with CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), marketplace subsidies and Medicare is responsible for 25 percent of the federal budget. Total Medicaid costs in 2016 were around $532 billion, per the Kaiser Family Foundation. States fund up to half of the cost of Medicaid, and in my state, Idaho, our share of Medicaid and related payments makes up about 21 percent of the ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 8, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/janice-boughton" rel="tag" > Janice Boughton, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Public Health & Washington Watch Source Type: blogs
Short-Term Plans Would Increase Coverage, Protect Conscience Rights & Improve ObamaCare Risk Pools
Conclusion Giving consumers the choice of purchasing renewal guarantees, either in conjunction with a short-term plan or as a standalone product protecting enrollees from underwriting in that market, would produce significant benefits well in excess of any costs. It would increase the number of Americans with health insurance, allow Americans to purchase insurance that respects their religious beliefs, and improve ObamaCare ’s risk pools. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 2, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs
Misdiagnosis: Obamacare Tried to Fix the Wrong Things and Prescribed the Wrong Treatments
By CHARLES SILVER and DAVID A.HYMAN
Today THCB is happy to publish a piece reflecting the learnings from Charles Silver and David Hyman’s forthcoming book Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much For Health Care, shortly to be published by the libertarian leaning Cato Institute. In subsequent weeks we’ll feature commentary from the right (Michael Cannon) and from the left (Andy Slavitt) about the book and its proposals. For now please give your views in the comments–Matthew Holt
There are many reasons why the United States is “the most expensive place in the world to get sick.” In Part 1 of Overcharg...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 19, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Economics OP-ED Cato Institute Charles Silver David A. Hyman Obamacare Overcharged Source Type: blogs
Don ’t blame doctors for outrageous emergency department prices
Recently I posted a piece, describing research out of Johns Hopkins, showing that when patients come to ERs — either with no insurance or insurance that is out-of-network — they often face charges that are four, six, or even ten-fold greater than what Medicare would pay for the same services.
After the post, I was inundated with angry tweets and emails, mainly from emergency medicine physicians outraged that I would blame them for these prices.
Below, I lay out some of these criticisms. I don’t expect I’ll satisfy all my critics, but I certainly want them to know that I’ve heard them, and that much of t...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 12, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/peter-ubel" rel="tag" > Peter Ubel, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Emergency Medicine Public Health & Washington Watch Source Type: blogs
The questionable ethics of ultrasound in pregnancy
Having worked at both community hospitals and major medical centers, the issue of ultrasound in pregnancy has revealed itself to be more complex over the years. As a resident, I worked with an obstetrics office that only scanned their own patients who had private insurance and would send uninsured or Medicaid patients (often with a high risk of inadequate prenatal care) to the hospital late in the day to be scanned after their office had closed. While seemingly ethically deplorable, this was business as usual in that community. In the affiliated community-based obstetrics residency, obstetricians-in-training did not learn ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 6, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/cory-michael" rel="tag" > Cory Michael, MD < /a > Tags: Conditions OB/GYN Radiology Source Type: blogs
Emergency Room Prices: They Are Outrageous, But I Am Not Blaming ER Clinicians
Shutterstock Recently I posted a piece, describing research out of Johns Hopkins, showing that when patients come to ERs – either with no insurance or insurance that is out-of-network – they often face charges that are four, six, or even ten-fold greater … Continue reading →
The post Emergency Room Prices: They Are Outrageous, But I Am Not Blaming ER Clinicians appeared first on PeterUbel.com. (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 31, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: PeterUbel.com Tags: Health Care health policy healthcare costs Peter Ubel syndicated Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 30th 2018
In conclusion, in the Framingham Heart Study population, in the last 30 years, disease duration in persons with dementia has decreased. However, age-adjusted mortality risk has slightly decreased after 1977-1983. Consequences of such trends on dementia prevalence should be investigated.
Recent Research on the Benefits of Exercise in Later Life
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2018/04/recent-research-on-the-benefits-of-exercise-in-later-life/
A sizable body of work points to the ability of older individuals to continue to obtain benefits through regular physical activity, and particularly in the case...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 29, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
And around we go again
Another brain dead baby is removed from life support in Britain and the " Christians " start howling. The case of Alfie Evans is pretty much identical to that of Charlie Gard, which we went through last year. Both had neurodegenerative conditions which resulted in the destruction of the cerebral cortex and a vegetative state. In both cases, their physicians wanted to take them off of life support and the parents fought it, refusing to accept reality. Along came the Pope and the Christian right calling the doctors murderers. We also got the plain old right claiming that it was socialism that was killing these babies.F...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 28, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
There Are Buoys: The Real Path to Lower cost in the Coming Catastrophic Deformation of Healthcare
By JOE FLOWER
There are buoys, far out in the ocean, that bob in the waves and signal, through satellites, when the surf will rise at Mavericks on the California coast, or when the tsunami will hit.
Here comes.
Healthcare in the U.S. is a hollow economy, inflated, impossible, all over patches and gimcracks and work-arounds puffed up on clouds of hot air generated by sweaty, dedicated crews of policy panjandrums and podium pundits burning forests of acronyms. True, that’s just looking at the bad side. But this bad side goes all the way around.
Will it pop? Will it undergo catastrophic exothermal deformation? Is it the Hi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 26, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Joe Flower Source Type: blogs
Cornelis (Cees) Wortel, Ichor Therapeutics Chief Medical Officer, on Rejuvenation Research and Its Engagement with the Established Regulatory System
Ichor Therapeutics is the most mature of the US-based companies that have emerged from the SENS rejuvenation research community in recent years. You might recall a number of interviews back in the Fight Aging! Archives with founder and CEO Kelsey Moody. He has his own take on how our community should proceed from laboratory to clinic: he is very much in favor of demonstrating (a) that the formal regulatory path offered by the FDA can work for the treatment of aging, and (b) that - given the right strategic approach - rejuvenation therapies can attract the attention, collaboration, and backing of Big Pharma entities in the ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
