Match Day

Today is “Match Day.”  The Match Day proceedings will determine not only where graduating students will work after medical school, but also what kind of doctors they will become.  What will work life be like for these students? If they were to enter a residency 20 years ago, they may have worked 120 hours per…

Links

Health tourism in Germany & hospital privatization in Poland. Private insurer’s enrollee turnover makes preventive care a poor investment. Don’t blame the insurance companies. Tyler Cowen on Managed Care. The ‘12 cent problem.’ No change in the share of Medicare costs for end-of-life care. The medicalization of life.

The High Cost of Growing Older

In America, your health care expenses are taken care of when you get older…right?  We have Medicare after all…shouldn’t that pay for all my healthcare expenses? Not according to a recent article from Yahoo! Finance.  Here are some of the health care costs retirees face: Part B Premiums: For most people retiring in 2010, the…

Does spending improve outcomes?

From a paper by Weinstein and Skinner (NEJM 2010): “Moreover, there is considerable variation in health care expenditures and a weak or even negative association between spending and outcomes, such as mortality at the regional level and quality measures at the state level. This evidence has been interpreted to mean that cutting back on these…