Category Archives: Health Insurance
Effectiveness and Cost
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th June 2009There’s a growing sentiment that a solution to out of control medical costs might be to limit reimbursement of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that are deemed to be of little or no effectiveness. I’ve written earlier that this is rationing of medical care in disguise. But let’s look at his issue in a little more…
› Read the full entry
The Rashomon Approach to Medicare
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th June 2009The May 28 number of the New England Journal of Medicine published three perspective pieces which show how hard it is to discuss anything to do with federal funding of medical care. The authors, all PhDs, were invited to write these articles presumably because they know a lot about the subject. I’ve already stated my…
› Read the full entry
Evidence Based Reimbursement
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th June 2009It didn’t take long. The day after I wrote that Evidenced Based Medicine would be used to ration medical care the June 8 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine appeared on my desk. Under the heading of Health Care Reform is “A 300-Year-Old Solution to the Health Care Crisis”. In it Diamond, et al…
› Read the full entry
More on Medicare's Administrative Costs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd June 2009I’ve previously written on how Medicare drastically underestimates its administrative costs. Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,has analyzed these costs a different way and concluded that administrative costs under a single payer scheme would be twice those of today’s health insurance. He doesn’t really count the hidden costs that I was carrying…
› Read the full entry
Medical Tourism
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th April 2009The NY Times recently published a story about medical tourism. You can read it for yourself. What’s most interesting about the phenomenon and what’s not mentioned specifically is that it is an attempt to establish market economics in medical care. Note again that health care is a terrible misnomer that distracts attention from the real…
› Read the full entry
Medicare's Overhead
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th December 2008Rep Pete Stark chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s health panel is once again on the warpath. The California Democrat delivered his latest zinger last week, saying he wouldn’t negotiate with insurance companies on a health-care overhaul. “I think their intention is to see the Democrats fail, regardless of what it does for…
› Read the full entry
Medicine and Inconvenient Truths
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th November 2008Victor Fuchs, a long time deep thinker (no sarcasm intended) about medical economics has a perspective piece in the October 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that presents three “inconvenient truths” about health care. His analysis is likely to represent that which will be applied to medical care over the next several…
› Read the full entry
Why Your Doctor Doesn't Need a Raise
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th August 2008An article in Boston Magazine entitled Why Your Doctor Needs a Raise could be the emblem for what’s wrong with the delivery of medical care in the Western world. The article examines the condition of medicine in the Bay State a year after the start of its government sponsored system of medical insurance. The article…
› Read the full entry
The Insurance-Hospital-Pharmaceutical Complex
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th May 2008The naiveté of the press when it covers medicine is wondrous. There isn’t any cockamamie nonsense they won’t swallow whole. Katherine Q Seelye has a piece in the New York Times that is about politics. I don’t know much about politics so I can’t comment on most of it. But in discussing the positions of…
› Read the full entry
Who Should Die?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th May 2008A recent report considers how physicians should triage patients in the event of a sudden catastrophe that overwhelms the medical system. “The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military, and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control…
› Read the full entry
