I was shopping the other day for Sam’s Club food (frozen blueberries 4 pounds for $7.50). As we checked out, I scanned the price of cigarettes behind the counter. Marlboro cigarettes were selling for just under $50 a carton. At one pack per day, that’s $150 a month. For a year, that works out to $1,800.
I once calculated how much a four-pack-a-day family could have had in the bank had they not smoked for fifty years and instead invested that money at standard returns. Six million dollars they’d have to enjoy in retirement. That’s amazing. Six million dollars. And we wouldn’t be talking about a bankrupt entitlement system. Read more »
Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, suggests we watch Massachusetts for what might be coming with healthcare reform:
Things are playing out just as one might predict in the Massachusetts small business and individual insurance market. The Insurance Commissioner turned down proposed rate increases, the state’s insurers appealed to the courts, and now they can’t write policies.
Perhaps more concerning is what Dennis Byron, a commenter on Mr. Levy’s blog, says about insurance exchanges:
I care because I am one of those who has been cancelled by my insurer (Fallon), solely, I believe, because I am an individual, have been told to go to the exchange, but the exchange does not work. This is a perfect example of why you don’t want the guys that run the registry running your healthcare.
If nothing else, this exposes the risks inherent to mandating unproven policy initiatives on a national scale that have yet to be even worked out in a single state.
*Sigh*
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
Educating individuals about the costs of healthcare could save money and lead to a more efficient use of the healthcare system, report policy researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine and Boston University School of Public Health.
You mean that people, when faced with facts about cost (and their end of it), choose the less-costly option? When did this start? Oh, yeah — we do it all the time — except in medicine, where our costs will bankrupt the country.
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
Lucien Engelen, organizer of Medicine 2.0 (Maastricht, November 2010) and TEDxMaastricht (March 2011) sent us a video message about reforming healthcare when we attended the Healthcare Social Media Camp in Berlin last week:
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
Sixty three percent of physicians are unhappy with the implications of President Obama’s healthcare reform plan. The government has reduced reimbursements arbitrarily over the last decade.
I believe there is some abuse of the healthcare system by a small percentage of physicians. I also believe congress has a lack of understanding of medical practice expenses, the value of physicians’ intellectual property and skill sets. Read more »
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