And the pot will be from Costco, not Williams-Sonoma.The most telling point about health reform in President Obama’s budget is that, “Some researchers believe that healthcare costs could be reduced by a stunning 30 percent — or about $700 billion a year — without harming quality if we moved as a nation toward the proven [...]

Why was per capita spending on people enrolled in Medicare $2,500 more in East Long Island, NY, than in San Francisco in 2006? Did the folks in New York get better care and achieve better outcomes than those on the west coast? The answer is, “no.” Welcome to the world of health care cost variation, [...]

Americans skipped recommended medical tests and procedures, cut pills, and skipped dental care due to cost in the past year. Welcome to the world of rationing, borne not from a government program, but of private sector market forces. With all due respect to Adam Smith, market forces don’t always work in the best interests of [...]

A new black box warning has arrived on the U.S. health care scene: the lack of health insurance is hazardous to your health. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that Congress act to get the U.S. to universal health coverage by 2010. Today, the rate of uninsurance in the U.S. increases by the [...]

4 in 10 cancer patients sought information via the Internet, according to a new study to be published in the April 1, 2009, issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Cancer. The downside of information-seeking cancer patients, according to the study, is that 1 in 4 of these patients received the drugs off-label — that is, for [...]