Tag Archives: Health Insurance
Why Talking About Healthcare is Futile
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th June 2010To have a meaningful debate on anything there has to be at least a rudimentary agreement about the nature of the problem. When it comes to healthcare most commentators seem to be based in an alternative universe. This is usually true of those on the left, but it also is spreading to the right. James…
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The Cost of a Mammogram
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th March 2010The descent to health helplessness is illustrated by mammography. Everyone had been in hysterics about whether health insurance, government or otherwise, will cover routine mammograms. Forget about whether the procedure is useful or not and focus on what it tells us about our loss of self reliance. The average cost of a mammogram is $102…
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The President and Defensive Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th March 2010The President recently had his annual physical exam. His Doctor, Jeffrey Kuhlman, is setting the standard for defensive medicine. His only patient, a healthy 48 year old man, was subjected to whole body electron beam tomography and a virtual colonoscopy. The former has no accepted medical use which is why Medicare and commercial insurance don’t…
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Massachusetts Health Care Reform – What Does it Mean?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th December 2009Massachusetts Health Care Reform — Near-Universal Coverage at What Cost? That’s the title of an article in the November 19th, 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.The authors of the piece, Joel S Weissman, PhD. and JudyAnn Bigby, MD, work for the the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. You can…
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Health Insurance Industry Profits
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th September 2009This post was suggested by an article by Mark J. Perry professor of economics at the University of Michigan. In it he lists the profit margins of the top 86 industries in the US. He stops at 86 because that’s the spot occupies by health insurance. If you want to see the complete list you…
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Medicare,The AARP, and Sutton's Law
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st August 2009There was a time when Sutton’s law was commonly taught to medical students, but its use has declined as has the notoriety of the bank robber (Willie Sutton) for whom it was named. Sutton is alleged to have said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is; he denied saying this. It’s meaning…
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Medical Care as a Right
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th August 2009If you asked a large randomly selected group of Americans whether medical care was a right many, perhaps most, would say yes. Analyze what such a right entails. If Mr Smith has a right to medical care but can’t afford to pay for it then Mr Green must. It’s a zero sum game. Smith consumes…
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Medicare's Payment of Physicians
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th March 2009Every year Congress goes through a Medicare ritual. The law as written requires about a 20% reduction in payments to doctors. Medicare’s rates are already low causing many physicians to refuse new Medicare patients who don’t have supplemental insurance.These physicians usually are the best in each locale; it’s the weakest that stay in the system…
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Exciting Times
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th February 2009That’s how Jonathan Gruber PhD a professor of economics at MIT views the domestic scene in the US today in a Perspective piece in the NEJM. What he’s excited about are the good prospects for the passage by the congress of universal health care coverage. Professor Gruber rejects the view that adding universal health care…
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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…
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