Given results of recent surveys showing that many Americans are struggling to pay their medical bills and buy prescription drugs, a Kiplinger's Personal Finance article …
Category: Health care costs
Are new antipsychotics overused?
If someone had asked me a few weeks ago what's the top-selling class of drugs in the United States I never would have guessed it's …
Study shows increase in unnecessary MRI use and spending
Last year, Stanford policy expert Laurence Baker, PhD, published a paper showing that high numbers of MRI machines were tied to higher numbers of MRI …
Big health-care costs for retirees
In case you missed it, a report (.pdf) released yesterday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute indicates - unsurprisingly - that older Americans need "a …
No co-pays mean more people take their medicine
Studies have shown that an increasing number of Americans are deserting their medical prescriptions, in large part because of higher out-of-pocket costs. Now new research …
The need to improve health behaviors
Will the country's new health law, which extends insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, do much to improve our health? Not necessarily, according to Steve …
The dos and don'ts of pill splitting
In a Consumer Reports survey conducted earlier this year, 39 percent of respondents said they had taken some sort of action to reduce the costs …
Victor Fuchs talks health-care costs and reform in Q&A
In a recent post on the Health Care Blog, Stanford health economist Victor Fuchs, PhD, discusses shifting priorities for future biomedical innovations, the challenge of …
U.S. Census Bureau releases new data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage
The Census Bureau today released new data on income, poverty and health insurance coverage. With respect to health insurance coverage, the Census Bureau reports: The …
Non-profit org looking for compelling stories on health-care costs
How important is cost-awareness in medical decision-making? Costs of Care, a "social venture" designed to help doctors understand how the decisions they make affect what …
Stanford's Victor Fuchs on the need for "value-conscious" biomedical innovations
In an article published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Stanford health economist Victor Fuchs, PhD, discusses how promoting "value-conscious" biomedical innovations …
George Lundberg on what's driving health care costs
Insured patients, immune to the cost consequences of care, are driving the price of medical attention skyward. That's according to George Lundberg, MD, who edited …
Start-up to introduce health care comparison shopping
The New York Times reports today on a startup, Castlight Health, that will soon offer a price comparison tool for medical procedures. Alan M. Garber, …
Trying to cut health-care costs by improving consumer behavior
I recently wrote about a report that showed consumers' (bad) behavior leads to $163 billion in wasteful pharmacy-related costs each year. Now, as reported by …
Consumers' behavior responsible for $163 billion in wasteful pharmacy-related costs
Forgetting to take necessary medications and shunning generics are two ways consumers are helping drive up our country's health-care costs. A new report from pharmacy-benefit …
Moore's Law? Not so much for health-care technology
In an interesting post today on The Health Care Blog, author and Wired editor Thomas Goetz analyzes why technology drives down costs in nearly every …