People with Medicare are among the only Americans with health insurance who are spared surprise medical bills. Everyone else lives in fear of going to an in-network hospital and not being able to...
Diane Archer
Hospital rates out of control with private health insurance
Hospital rates are out of control for people with private health insurance. Medicare, in sharp contrast to private health insurers, has the power to rein in provider rates for its recipients, even...
Coronavirus: Face masks and face shields
You’ve likely already read a lot about the value of wearing a face mask when you are in public spaces. You’ve read less about face shields. Here’s what some experts are saying. You...
Artificial intelligence machines can prompt physicians to...
StatNews reports on how artificial intelligence machines are prompting physicians to discuss end-of-life issues with their terminally ill patients. At its best, artificial intelligence leads...
Novartis, Sanofi and Pfizer engaged in illegal kickbacks and...
There’s a long history of pharmaceutical companies engaged in bribery and other illegal activities. The pharmaceutical industry routinely puts its interests before the public health every way...
Coronavirus: Pharmaceutical companies raise prices on COVID-19...
Between January and June of this year, pharmaceutical companies increased prices on 245 drugs, in a series of price hike similar to price hikes in 2019, according to a new report from Patients for...
Coronavirus: How “pool testing” could help
The novel coronavirus is not going away at the moment. Tens of thousands more people are getting infected. And, the US has not yet figured out how to successfully control its spread or to test...
Hospital price transparency won’t make health care...
In our Kafkaesque healthcare system, people are told to make an “informed choice” of health insurance when not even the prices private health insurers pay hospitals are transparent...
Medicare helps reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health...
In a recent piece for Health Affairs, Renee Landers et al. write about the role Medicare has played and can continue to play in reducing racial disparities. In a separate piece for the International...
Coronavirus underscores and might worsen health and income...
Nobel laureate and Princeton University economics professor Angus Deaton explains how the novel coronavirus pandemic underscores inequalities in the US. He suggests that without major reforms to our...