A key premise of the consumer-directed health movement and a number of other health reform concepts is that patients can understand health information and choices and make good decisions. An…
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HHS has issued its draft regulation on what preventive services health plans must cover without cost-sharing by the patient. Someone, of course, has to pay for all these "free" services,…
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Another week, another potpourri, this time with items on workers' compensation drug spending, benefit consulting firm mergers, hospital readmissions, geographic variation in spending and use of mobile vans to deliver…
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A study reported in JAMA examines the use of telemedicine techniques to improve the management of pain and depression in cancer patients.
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The state of human knowledge is often imperfect and medical treatment provides frequent examples of that. What we think we know often turns out to be erroneous as two recent…
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There are so many sources of the rapid increases in national health spending that it is hard to track them all. A recent article estimates the costs of "medicalization", the…
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Struggling with the continuing rise in health insurance premiums, Rhode Island's Insurance Commissioner takes some creative steps to attempt to slow the rise of hospital costs, which are a major…
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Medical care provided near the end of a patient's life accounts for a significant portion of total national health spending and is often inconsistent with patient wishes. New research evaluates…
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Sitting indoors seeking relief from the summer heat? Here's a montage of cool and refreshing health care items, including CPOE systems, accountable care organizations, Massachusetts' reform experience, reducing imaging, and…
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Coventry gets slapped with a two hundred-million-plus dollar damage award for failing to comply with Louisiana's PPO statute. Ouch that hurts. A vivid example of the need to pay careful…
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