Yves here. Hospitals have become yet another example of looting by the administrative classes. Roy Poses explains the result is ever-rising executive pay even when financial results often deteriorate. The next phase of their misrule will be to implement further cost cuts (not including their pay, mind you), with the almost-certain result that standards of care will fall.
Read more...It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! –Upton Sinclair Schadenfreude is a dish best served, and MIT Professor and Larry Summers student Jonathan Gruber, who played a key (though conflicted) role in legislating both ObamaCare and ObamaCare’s precursor, RomneyCare, certainly had it coming. […]
Read more...Just because it’s better doesn’t mean it’s any good.
Read more...Nothing like the American policy elite showing its true colors
Read more...Taking some swipes at visualizations and analysis based on Enroll America data.
Read more...Yves here. We’ve written about the pitfalls of electronic health records in the past. One of the surprising reactions is the “dazzled by technology” response of some readers. While there are problems with relying on paper-based records, and electronic records could in fact remedy many of them, a large swathe of the public seems unwilling to hear that what is good in theory may not turn out well in practice.
The sorry fact is that electronic health records, which in theory should reduce errors and allow for more consistent delivery of medical services, were instead designed only with patient billing and control over doctors in mind. As a result, they are if anything worsening medical outcomes. One indicator: as we reported, the latest ECRI Institute puts health care information technology as the top risk in its 2014 Patient Safety Concerns for Large Health Care Organizations report. Note that this ranking is based on the collection and analysis of over 300,000 events since 2009.
This is another example of crapification. Electronic medical records have been implemented, with apparent success, in other economics. For instance, when I lived in Australia from 2002 to 2004, it was normal for doctors to make use of them during patient visits, making entries into the system, and I never got the impression they found it onerous. Here, in New York City, I still see doctors making considerable use of paper records. As the article indicates below, the reason is the US systems are costly, lower productivity, and make doctors less likely to review patient information.
Read more...WalMart just announced that it will at some unspecified point down the road end minimum wage-level pay for its workers. As we’ll demonstrate, there is way less here than meets the eye. In fact, all in pay levels, including benefits, are falling for WalMart workers, not rising.
Read more...Ebola is a very nasty disease, but it is actually fairly easy to understand mathematically, which is why the disease prevention folks are confident in the best ways to manage this epidemic that otherwise seems to be growing exponentially.
Read more...As discussion, if not outright panic, about Ebola infections increases in the US, it is still hard to figure out what heath care professionals and the health care system need to do to protect patients and the public in a very changed world.
Read more...Yves here. I’m not one to fan Ebola fears. In fact, I’m a bit loath to give it the prominence in Links that I am, given the small number of cases in the US and in the world ex the afflicted parts of Africa. While the mortality rate is high, it’s not all that infectious. You are still more at risk from dying by virtue of driving (if you drive) than you are of dying from Ebola or terrorism.
However, whether or not Ebola morphs into a more virulent version, concern about it is legitimate, if for no other reason than that the US healthcare system is neither willing nor able to cope well with flareups of deadly diseases.
Read more...ObamaCare’s website may be fixed, but enrollment figures are bad, the project is out of control, and the back end is still broken.
Read more...“I’m ready to get back to work. I just doesn’t have much to work with.”
Read more...Results, Ramifications and Neglected Corners of the Scottish Independence Vote
Read more...Yves here. Maggie Mahar’s post focuses on a pet peeve of mine, namely, the way treatments and procedures are overprescribed in the US. She includes a favorite example, that of colonoscopies.
However, I take issue with Mahar’s conclusion, that waste in Medicare means that Medicare for all should not serve as a way to get to single payer (even assuming that issue can be opened up again in the next decade).
Read more...ObamaCare will be back in the headlines soon enough, when open enrollment begins. And then comes tax time! Meanwhile, it still pins the bogometer.
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