2014 will make big changes in how we get our healthcare. These changes are not only in our insurance, but also in our doctors, our hospitals, and our medications. How will you succeed health-wise in 2014?
To help give you some tips, check out my recent blog on the Huffington Post http://huff.to/19JxecW and you will have emote confidence in the coming year. Beware of not doing your homework now. You could be looking at gaps in…
Choosing the right insurance cn be daunting. so many choices are out there! And the exchanges seem to make the process more complicated, at least for the next 3 months.
So I have posted a blog as a contributor to the Huffington Post http://huff.to/1bTQjtB. Read the post and get the help you need to choose wisely! 2014 will be a good year for health, but you are more in control and have more expected…
Choosing the right health insurance has always been confusing. But this perplexing dilemma has become more difficult for 2014 because Obamacare is being implemented. So which insurance is best for you?
I have reviewed the various types of policies in my book “Surviving American Medicine”. But now let me give you my best advice on which policy you should choose.
If you are eligible for Medicare and can afford it, choose the Medicare option with…
More Affordable Care Act (ACA, or ObamaCare) changes will take place in January 2014. The most important are changes in insurance policies and in physician networks. Also challenging to everyone are the changes in physician attitudes (anger, confusion, burn out) and practice structure. Many of these are described in my book “Surviving American Medicine” along with tips on how to manage them.
But now you need to take some action to help protect your own…
Prescription medicines are becoming more expensive. New medicines may cost up to $10,000 per month, and even older generic medicines have had price increases, or been moved to specialty drugs with higher copays.
Because of this many patients are making the error of not taking all the medicine as prescribed, or taking only half doses, or even stopping the medicine without letting the doctor know. This is dangerous.
For a discussion of the problem and…
One of the major types of insurance available to patients with low incomes is Medicaid. Access to Medicaid is being expanded through the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). The question is, how does Medicaid insurance really help people?
The answer is in part provided by an excellent article by K. Baicker and co-authors (New England Journal of Medicine 2013, Volume 368, Page 173) and an accompanying editorial by R. Kronick and A. Bindman (New England Journal…
Communication between physicians and patients is crucial to delivering high quality medical care. However, it is the experience of most patients that communicating with their physicians has become more difficult.
With healthcare reform, physicians often have less time to discuss things with their patients. An informational brochure may be handed out, or physicians may simply say, “talk to my nurses for more information.”
In a recent set of articles in the Journal of the American…
Young adults 18 to 35 years of age, including recent graduates, are faced with an important health care challenge: you may have only
a low income (maybe even none), perhaps high student loans, no health conditions or challenges, and you want to know how to protect the quality of and access to your health care. Since you are not sick, why should you even consider getting health insurance coverage, with you knowing it can be really…
The articles and news coverage of problems in how to access American medical care are described as health-care disparities. This is the policy-makers way of talking about poverty, joblessness, or racial/gender/age discrimination. These are all difficult problems to overcome if one is to get good medical care.
It is often stated that many of those conditions occur in a setting of less access to care. But more often, the feeling of less access is more a…
With health care reform under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), doctors will become more overworked. To get better health care, you may have to see nurse practitioners. I agree with a recent editorial in the New York Times http://nyti.ms/VOJsWe which says that trained nurse practitioners may be able to replace physicians as the point of contact for prescribing care in many circumstances.
But these professionals do not have the depth of training and experience of physicians….