Medicare Expanding Access to Hospice Care
Medicare has announced an expansion of a pilot project to allow Medicare beneficiaries to use hospice services while at the same time receiving treatments for a cure. Previously, if you went into hospice care, you had to stop chemotherapy or radiation and other treatments. The theory implicitly was why spend money on a cure if you are expected […]
How To Age Well
Patricia Sarmiento in Walnut, California, founder of publichealthcorps.org, is on a mission to put the public back in public health. She believes public health is only effective if the public can actually access and discern what information is reliable. Her goal is to provide a hub of reputable and useful public information on health topics. Lately, Patricia […]
Are Drugs Too Expensive?
The subject of drug prices is making the news much more frequently. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this week pointed out drugs are only 10% of the cost of American healthcare. My research indicated it was closer to 15%, but even at 10%, the cost approaches $400 billion. The article was written by […]
Topol Interviews Gawande and Gladwell: Awesome People
Dr. Eric J. Tool is Director, Scripps Translational Science Institute and Editor-in-Chief at Medscape. Medscape is part of the WebMD Health Professional Network. Eric has a regular video interview series called One on One. I find his interviews extremely interested, and I would like to share two I just watched. You must be a Medscape subscriber […]
How Many Surgeries Are Necessary?
As discussed in Health Attitude, the number one problem with our healthcare system is the high cost. There are many reasons for the high cost including fraud, inefficiency, big pharma runaway pricing, and unncessary tests and procedures. Some estimates put the cost of the latter factor at between $500 billion and $1 trillion. The cost is unsustainable […]
