Many states have passed laws limiting prior authorization. Physicians hate prior authorization and claim insurers and health plans use it to ration care. I tend to be more sympathetic to prior authorization because in an industry where patients are insulated from the cost of their care, there needs to be some checks and balances over unnecessary care and care that is unnecessarily expensive. I often tell the story about the time my wife unknowingly tried to schedule a CT scan at a hospital outpatient clinic near our house.
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
Monday Links
- Penn Wharton warning: the US is headed toward default.
- Aaron Carroll: misinformation about health care has a very long history.
- Will shaming hospitals make them lower their charges?
- How progressives thought about race – 100 years ago.
- The worst police abuses do not involve accidental shootings.
- More on why marriage matters.
Why There Is a Nursing Shortage
I began my career in health care more than 30 years ago working at a hospital. For as long as I can remember there has been a nursing shortage. The reasons given for this are many, most of which are wrong. When I was a budget analyst, a senior vice president (SVP) told us nurses are caring people. He added nurses make great mothers and often quit to raise their kids. He explained that the staffing shortage was exacerbating the staffing shortage by increasing the stress levels of nurses on staff.
Saturday Links
- Marriage is a class thing: roughly half of all births to women without four-year college degrees now happen without married fathers.
- Should doctors have to pay the insurers a fee in order to get paid what they are owed?
- Avoiding a hospital stay may improve your odds of survival.
- Intergenerational poverty: 17% of Asian children living in households with incomes below or near the poverty line were poor in adulthood, compared with 25% (Latino), 29% (White), 37% (Black), and 46% (Native American)
- Health Savings Account bills being marked up in the W & M Committee in the House.