Next in a series. In my previous post, I explained the basics of my Healthcare Incentives Framework, which enumerates the jobs we want a health care system to do for us and links them to the parties in the health care system that have the greatest ince…
A lot of media attention, including television, print, and online sources, is focused on various plans to revolutionize the delivery of health care in America. Critics point to medical errors, waste of resources, and lack of access among the numerous …
If the Democrats capture the White House, keep the House and take over the Senate, no matter who they elect as president, this Biden health care outline, not Medicare for all, will likely be the plan Democrats embrace in 2021. The Biden health care pro…
First in a series. Way back as a business strategy undergrad and then as a medical student, I developed a framework for understanding health care systems. I call it the Healthcare Incentives Framework, and I believe it clarifies the big-picture compone…
Sometimes an image captures the heart of a nation by putting a face on a human crisis. The one of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 2-year-old daughter Valeria lying face down in the Rio Grande after drowning was powerful. Their family had been …
Over half of Medicare spending is concentrated in 10 percent of patients. With Medicare expenditures rising at an unsustainable clip, reigning in the costs of those patients is key to controlling health care spending. So who are those patients and what…
Recent polls show a majority of Americans support Medicare for all, but few seem to realize that no other system in the world operates like the current single-payer proposals in Congress. I addressed the concept of single-payer health care, with Cuba’…
Why does the most expensive health care system on the planet do such a poor job protecting the lives of pregnant women? More important, what can be done about it? The United States continues to lead the world in health care spending yet it has the high…
When Ashley Pintos went to the emergency room of St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., in 2016, with a sharp pain in her abdomen and no insurance, a representative demanded a $500 deposit before treating her. “She said, ‘Do you have $200?’ I said…
Physicians nearing the end of their careers often mourn the loss of the hospital as it once was — the undisputed center of the health care universe. They remember a time when every community doctor rounded on patients in the morning, and every su…
