Hidden Medication Costs
The following anecdote is from a Massachusetts patient covered by Medicare. Always covered by an employer health plan, I had never given a thought to prescription costs – my medications had been covered by moderate copays. This changed when I retired and enrolled in Medicare (and a Medicare Part D plan). Just prior to retirement, my eyes suddenly began tear and swell so much that it impacted my vision. The eye doctor diagnosed an allergic reaction and prescribed prednisone drops to reduce the swelling and antihistamine drops to combat the reaction. The antihistamine drops required...
Read MoreLessons Learned from my Uncle’s Sacrifice: A Proposal to Reform Medicare
The following anecdote is by Dr. John Maa, Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. It is a follow-up to his original story published here three months ago (“Ultimate Sacrifice”). You can also read the story of his mother in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine (“The Waits that Matter”). My uncle’s tale illustrates the fundamentally American tragedy of experiencing financial and medical catastrophes simultaneously, and having to choose between rationing one’s own care or depleting precious financial...
Read MoreCaveats to “letting go”
A recent NYTimes article comes at the heels of Dr. Gawande’s compelling essay on end of life care. The matter at hand is that legislators are realizing the economic value of palliative care options for terminally ill patients. Recently, Gov. David A. Paterson signed into law a bill — the New York Palliative Care Information Act — requiring physicians who treat patients with a terminal illness to have frank discussions about prognosis and options for end-of-life care, including aggressive pain management and hospice care as well as the possibilities for further life-sustaining...
Read More
Last Tweets
Recent Comments