A mother who recently gave birth to premature quadruplets experienced a $4 million hospital bill. That was $1 million per child. Her babies required neonatal ICU for lengths of stay that varied from two months to nearly five months. The mother even quit her job in the sixth month of her pregnancy to qualify for Medicaid because she knew she could not afford the medical bills associated with quadruplets.
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
An AI Doctor Will See You Now… (right on your computer screen)
A while back my wife saw her doctor for an ongoing health concern. Years later we still wonder why an obvious diagnosis was missed and what could have been done to avoid unnecessary care. Why do I say the diagnosis was obvious? I recently entered a one-sentence description of the problem into Google, and it told me the exact cause and listed a variety of websites discussing treatments.
Saturday Links
- Hooper: Why drug efficacy should be determined by doctors and patients, not FDA testing.
- Scott Gottlieb: How safe are vaccines?
- Most foreigners actually pay more than we do overall because they have access to fewer generics and they pay more for generics than we do.
- A typical Canadian family of four will pay an estimated $19,060 for public health-care insurance.
- Work requirements for Arkansas Medicaid enrollees: no increase in preventable hospital admissions or emergency room visits.
- How Obamacare discriminates against the sick.
- M Cannon: in defense of health insurance companies.
Study: People Who Have Illusory Beliefs about Health Often Mistrust Medical Science
Medical skepticism is common among Americans, even among those who trust their own doctors. Vaccine skepticism is especially common these days. While I am not a medical skeptic, I consider myself a medical realist. Not every drug works well. Too many drugs rely on the placebo effect for their therapeutic method.