Menu
The Goodman Institute Health Blog
  • Home
  • Authors
    • Devon Herrick, Ph.D.
    • John C. Goodman
  • Popular Topics
    • Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare
    • Consumer-Driven Health Care
      • Affordable Care Act
      • Cost of Healthcare
      • COVID-19 and Public Health
      • Doctors & Hospitals
      • Public Insurance
      • Policy & Legislation
    • Direct Primary Care
    • Health Economics & Costs
      • Drug Prices & Regulations
      • Health Insurance
      • Health Reform
    • Medical Tourism
    • Telemedicine
    • Medicare
      • Single-Payer/Medicare-for-All
  • Goodman Institute
  • Contact
The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Monday Links

Posted on September 25, 2023September 25, 2023 by John C. Goodman

Health gains from key prescription drugs.

Steve Henke, et. al., skewer a new Royal Society report on Covid-19.

Health Affairs study:  employers lack leverage to negotiate lower prices. Have they never heard of reference pricing?

CDC: we are losing the battle against obesity. I thought we lost it a long time ago.

Inequities at the doctors office: is it because the patients don’t speak up for themselves?

1 thought on “Monday Links”

  1. Bob Hertz says:
    September 25, 2023 at 3:37 pm

    Thanks for the note on reference pricing….

    I was really hopeful when this concept came out, but by all indications it has never taken off.

    Based on my study, here are the reasons:

    1. It makes the patient do a LOT more work. The patient has to find out the price of care in his favorite hospital/clinic, then he/she has to contact other providers and get their price, (no easy task).

    2. If the patient just lets things play out, they could face a large balance bill.

    If his/her usual hospital charges $20,000 but the reference price is $10,000, the insurer might just pay $10,000 and the patient would get a balance bill for the rest.

    You can be assured that other people in the company will hear about the patient’s anger.

    3. For all this P.R. risk, the savings may not be very large. Yes, an employer can save money on imaging through reference pricing. And yes, an employer can save money on relatively non-urgent procedures like knee replacement.

    Some employers will not find such savings are worth the possible employee anger from reference pricing.

    Loading...
    Reply

Join the conversation.Cancel reply

For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

Visit www.goodmaninstitute.org

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 34 other subscribers

Popular Topics

©2025 The Goodman Institute Health Blog | Website by Lexicom
%d