medicine

According to a new analysis released last month, Americans spent $3.65 trillion dollars on health care in 2018 – more than the entire gross domestic product of Canada.

If the government is the ultimate authority on your “health care,” remember that its tools for checking whether a child has a life-threatening disease such as meningitis include battering rams and assault rifles.

With all the talk about “evidence-based medicine,” you might think that doctors were becoming much more focused on rigorous science.

At last, regulatory flexibility for the seriously ill from the FDA.

Savage joined Health Care News Managing Editor Michael Hamilton on today’s HCN Podcast to explain how direct primary care providers can afford to offer top-flight care for low- and middle-income patients … without insurance. Savage also distinguished direct primary care from a model with which it is often confused: the uber-expensive “concierge medicine.”

The Republicans are at it again: trying to tweak a bad idea, make it “bipartisan,” and set a flawed system more firmly in concrete. What we really need is a Republican reform – one that can restore the republic, along with medicine.

When government “helps” run something – that something is terrible. The bigger a hand government has in running it – the more terrible it is. If it is exclusively government-run – the terrible-ness is ingrained and inherent. And the longer government runs the show – the worse the terrible-ness becomes.

Big Healthcare is no exception, and it is important to understand just what healthcare is. The trillions of dollars of revenue sucked in by Big Healthcare are not just for medical care. “Healthcare” is mainly concerned with collecting and distributing the money. Perhaps half of the money gushing through the system pays nurses, doctors, orderlies, receptionists, or therapists, or buys medications, oxygen concentrators, wheelchairs, bandages, or x-ray machines. The rest is diverted to something else. It’s hard to figure out just how much because insurers may, in calculating the “medical loss ratio,” call a lot of things “healthcare” that you might call “administration.”

While Americans are preoccupied with the political theater of the Presidential race, special interest groups toil to pass legislation that could radically transform your medical care. One example is the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which has passed in 11 states. Pennsylvania has joined a number of others in proposing it.

Smoking, obesity, exposure to toxic chemicals: Which of these factors do you think plays the biggest role in determining how deadly prostate cancer will be in a given situation? The correct answer is none of them. The most life-threatening factor in prostate cancer is poverty, coupled with a lack of access to electricity. This condition, called “energy poverty” by the World Bank, is the reason all illnesses – including prostate cancer – are far more devastating to people in poor nations than in the developed world.

We’ve seen it in too many sectors of the economy to possibly mention – both domestically and internationally. The greater the government involvement in an economic sector – the greater the ensuing economic damage. To that sector – and the broader economy.

Writing in the National Journal, Sam Baker tries his darnedest to minimize some of the effects of Obamacare.

Katy Butler argues for public support to bring society back to a better way to die and offers an excellent road map toward success. This is an outstanding book for anyone who believes that death is inevitable.