Why is American health care so expensive?

I have been following the progress of bedside ultrasound (using ultrasound as a diagnostic tool during physical exam of patients) as it gets a foothold in standard medical practice. It has been part of my practice for almost 3 years now, during which time I have been repeatedly amazed by how helpful it is for guiding my clinical decisions. There is good research showing how useful it is for all sorts of applications, from heart problems to intestinal obstruction, but it is still slow to catch on. An article came out just recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, which has a large circulation and should make a bit of a splash. This multi-center study looked at the option of having patients (excluding the very obese, pregnant and critically ill) with abdominal and flank pain suspected of having kidney stones evaluated first by emergency physicians with ultrasound of the kidneys and bladder before considering getting a CT scan. Normally a patient with suspected kidney stones (...

I am mostly a pretty big fan of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the society that (usually) represents me as an internal medicine physician. They present meetings and conferences to spread new and relevant information and they promote gifted and hard working physicians and medical teachers. They are a force for organization in our profession which often fails to pull together and sometimes resembles a group of agitated hedgehogs. Some of the educational offerings that they produce are ground breaking, encouraging us to practice medicine that is more effective and patient centered. I do pay $525 yearly to maintain my membership, but that doesn't seem unfair. So that is why I opened the slick tri-fold large format postcard that I got in the mail today rather than recycling it immediately. It said, "Practice safe opioid prescribing with ACP's resources." Over-prescribing opiate painkillers such as morphine, oxycodone and hydrocodone is a huge problem in the ...