Posts tagged “Healthcare”
For-profit health care will kill at least 50 million Americans over the next 30 years or so
This study estimated that socioeconomically vulnerable Canadians’ chances of receiving better health care were 36% greater than their American counterparts and this estimate was larger than that based on general patient comparisons (9%). One may wonder about the public health significance of such relative risks/protections. Attributions of risk/protection among populations are a function of three […]
What if instead of becoming the world’s police, we’d become the world’s doctors?
In Liberia, we saw that communities with strong primary healthcare were better able to stem the spread of Ebola. We are now applying these lessons to more effectively protect the health of our people should another outbreak strike. We have prioritised investments in primary healthcare to ensure that citizens can secure essential health services free […]
Being chronically ill doesn’t make me a better person, but it does help me identify jerks
I assume people think surviving illness changes you because there’s something inherently character-building about pain. But what happened wasn’t a struggle, in the sense that through perseverance I overcame something difficult. For a fairly brief but unexpected period of my life, I lost my capacity to work, to advocate for myself, to navigate life and […]
Why cheap patients are expensive for doctors
providing services to headache patients—no matter how needed they are—is often described as a money-losing proposition. The problem is twofold: headache medicine requires few procedures, while at the same time, necessitates long doctor-patient appointments. This matters because in the United States reimbursement rates pay much higher dividends for procedures than “evaluation and management.” Joanna Kempner […]
Double bind, medical edition
If I look bad at the doctor’s, they think I’m exaggerating. If I look good at the doctor’s, they think I’m coping well enough that I don’t need treatment.
Working through a heart attack
The other morning I started feeling weird and not very good. I ignored it for several hours, but I kept feeling worse. I very recently started taking a new supplement for my migraines, and I realized that I hadn’t done very thorough research on its interactions with the other drugs I take. Maybe I shouldn’t […]
How to get your prescriptions covered/reimbursed
Go to doctor and be prescribed a new drug. (.75 hrs) Get new prescription filled. Find out drug is not automatically covered by government prescription drug coverage. Save those receipts! (.5 hrs) Schedule a new doctor’s appointment. (.17 hrs) Find and print exception paperwork for government prescription drug coverage cases and fill out your parts. […]