For the last couple of decades, instead of admitting all Medicare patients who stay overnight as inpatients, hospitals have been providing some patients with “observation” care and...
Diane Archer
Medicare and Medicaid at 50: Their roles in our health care...
A 2015 article in Health Affairs by Drew Altman and Bill Frist speaks to Medicare and Medicaid at 50, looking at the numbers, their roles in our health care system, the challenges they face and...
FDA backlog keeps generics from coming to market
In October 2015, there were as many as 3,000 generic drugs waiting to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. FDA underfunding may explain it in part. So might incomplete information on...
Competition can’t rein in health care costs
Like many policy debates, there are two principal schools of thought regarding how to rein in health care costs, with many variations on the themes. One school believes that competition is key to...
Can you budget for your health care?
If you have commercial health insurance, be it a Medicare Advantage plan, a state health exchange plan or an employer plan, and you are struggling to budget for your health care, you’re not...
Visiting the doctor costs even more than you think
Many of us not yet on Medicare visit the doctor in fear of the sizeable bill we will owe, even if only for the deductible or the copay. But, a Harvard Medical School study shows that if you add in...
Should we treat aging as a disease?
Experts disagree as to whether aging is simply a natural process or we should treat it as a disease. If aging is seen as a diseases, we should be looking for ways to treat it. Not surprisingly, the...
Opioid deaths on the rise
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warns of the dangers of opioids. Last year opioid pain relievers and heroin alone were responsible for some 47,000 deaths in the United...
What’s a Guaranteed Retirement Account?
We all need to be saving for retirement. But, the options for many of us are slim. Some of us have 401(k) plans, which have their own limitations. Labor economist, Teresa Ghilarducci proposes...
To save money on drugs, avoid chain pharmacies
A Consumer Reports investigative report reveals that to save money on drugs, you may want to avoid chain pharmacies. Pharmacies such as CVS, RiteAid and Walgreens sometimes charge as much as 10...