Can Health Care Be Bought and Sold on eBay?
A small, emerging online service called MediBid is creating an actual market that puts doctors together with patients who need care. Here’s the best thing about it. Patients who use this service can cut their health care costs in half. Continue reading
Patient as paying customer vs. health plan as paying customer
In response to Wal-mart’s plan to expand its medical care offerings, John Goodman summarizes what happens when your health plan buys your health care rather than emulating how car insurance and home-owners insurance does, and how walk-in clinics are growing. Continue reading
Hey, Paul Krugman, patients should be consumers, not helpless pawns in an authoritarian politically-controlled health care system you support
Nobel-prize winner & New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman is demonstrates how little he knows about health care policy. Let me count the ways.
A Radically Different Approach to Health Insurance
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis writes: [B]efore the current era, the most common form of health insurance — other than Blue Cross plans — was indemnity insurance with a fee schedule. A typical benefit consisted of so many dollars a day for each day in the hospital. Since the benefit was […]
Colorado Amendment 63, risk pools, & health care costs
A July 30 statement from a group calling itself “Colorado Deserves Better” said that Colorado Amendment 63 (Health Care Choice) “would isolate Colorado from health care costs savings by shrinking the risk pool in Colorado.” This is unlikely, and even so, it’s unethical. Even if larger risk pools result in cost savings (for whom?), this […]
Health care innovation: good and bad
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis has an excellent column abut health care innovation. He summarizes: Wherever there is third-party payment [insurance, a health plan, Medicare, Medicaid], the goal of innovation is to produce more products that qualify for reimbursement, even if the effects on patient outcomes are only marginal. Wherever there […]
What abortion costs can tell us about medical care costs
Note: This post is not about the proper legal status of abortion or whether it is moral. It’s about medical care costs and how patients pay for it. Readers can appreciate the content of this post regardless of their position on legal abortion.
Politicians like to talk about how to keep medical care costs in check, […]
Pay your doctor cash, get better treatment
Jay Parkinson, M.D. writes:
If we really want to find out how to damn near perfectly manage any medical problem as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, we should be studying how doctors manage the medical problems of the cash-paying doctors they see in their own practice.
Dr. Parkinson relates his experience […]
White House economist: third-party payment increases health care spending
Last week I noted that President Obama does not know what health insurance is, and decries real insurance while praising prepaid health plans masquerading as insurance. I also posted about how ObamaCare, HR 3590, threatens real insurance policies, that is, HSA-qualified plans. Maybe the President should listen to one of his economic advisors. From the […]
