Why is American health care so expensive?

I just recently became aware of a study that came out in March of this year which concluded that statins, drugs like lipitor (atorvastatin) and zocor (simvastatin), which people take, increasingly, to lower their cholesterol and their risk of heart disease, have NO SIDE EFFECTS. Here is a paper which explains the study. It is not possible to link to the actual study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology because they want me to pay for it. The paper says that, when comparing patients who took statins to ones who took an inactive pill, the side effects of both were about the same. That is called the "nocebo effect". Many people have heard about the "placebo effect" in which a sham treatment or sugar pill has a beneficial effect due, we think, to the fact that the subjects who receive it think it will work. Placebo, in Latin, means "I will please" and nocebo means "I will harm." So the researchers who wrote the paper about statins,...

Healthcare is actually a 24 hour a day 7 day a week job. People get sick even when we physicians are supposed to be sleeping or eating dinner or showering or brushing our teeth. Having care available all the time often saves lives and usually reduces suffering. In the US, we have that pretty well worked out: everyone with a doctor has an after hours number to call and if that fails or the problem is too big, there is always an emergency room or at least an ambulance or fire truck to whisk one away to where help is waiting. One of the problems with our after hours options is that a person is rarely seen by a doctor who knows them and is familiar with their medical history. It would be ideal for all of us to have rapid access to the doctor (or nurse practitioner or physician's assistant) who has been with us for years and who knows what works, what doesn't and who we can relate to and trust. Unfortunately that person has to sleep and eat dinner and sometimes even go on vacati...

Blue skies... It is a beautiful day here in this little college town. The sun is shining and at 11 AM it is about 78 degrees with a barely perceptible breeze. People are out walking on Main Street and riding their bikes. The mountain nearby calls: I can go for a hike today with my dog and still be within 20 minutes or so of the hospital to respond to calls. A mostly empty hospital There are two patients on the hospitalist service in this fine critical access hospital. That is a tiny workload for my profession--hospitalists, who take care of patients in the hospital who have no primary care physician or whose doctor doesn't manage their care while they are inpatients, usually don't complain unless they are managing over 18 patients in a day. I am often quite busy, but not today. One of my two patients is going home later this morning. She is bright and cheerful, with progressive Alzheimer's disease and chronic lung disease from a long gone habit of smoking 3 packs of c...

  For a few months I have been noticing that several of my friends and acquaintances, as well as all sorts of famous people, have been filming themselves dumping ice water over their heads and then talking a little bit about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Then they suggest that I donate money to the ALS Association . It has been a particularly hot summer, which partly explains the popularity of the phenomenon, and mostly all of these people look adorable soaking wet and spluttering, which is an added bonus.  The ALS Association, and the British version, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, have made boatloads of money off of the challenge. Originally the idea was that a person would challenge another person to donate money for ALS research and if they hadn't done so in 24 hours, they would dump a bucket of ice water over their head. It turns out that people like dumping ice buckets over their heads (at least this summer) and posting video clips of it and also like ...

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