Why is American health care so expensive?

About 5 months ago I embarked on an adventure in healthcare . My healthcare. I decided to take medicine to reduce my cardiovascular risk. I recognize that my cardiovascular risk is pretty low, and when I am much older I may wish for a nice clean cardiac death before I lose my faculties. Having found a plaque in my carotid artery while ultrasounding myself, I decided that perhaps I should enter the ranks of consumers who take drugs to reduce their blood pressure and cholesterol. Astute readers made various comments, including that perhaps I should first try diet, weight loss, exercise and that I should be aware that someone of my description has a low likelihood of actually benefiting from drug treatment of these things. These were reasonable comments. It turns out that I don't need to lose weight, being at the bottom of the healthy range of body mass index, and that my exercise level is pretty optimal, my diet is as evidence based as I can make it, and although I have a low ris...

"Annie, Annie, are you OK?" Many of us learned to resuscitate a person who has collapsed using Annie, the manikin based on a death mask of a young woman who had drowned in the Seine in Paris in the 19th century. Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has become increasingly accepted and expected as the years have passed, and we have even begun to make affordable machines to deliver a life-saving shock (defibrillation) to the heart of a person who has collapsed with an otherwise life threatening heart rhythm disturbance. We lack, though, much good information about how useful the procedure is in saving lives and bringing people back to meaningful existence. A recent study completed in Denmark looked at the outcomes of bystander performed CPR and defibrillation. Denmark has been quite aggressive in training and encouraging citizens to perform CPR when a person collapses and is found to have no pulse. They have also been scrupulous about keeping records of what h...

Gilbert Welch  has written an excellent commentary on the fresh-out-of-the-printer recommendations of the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding screening for thyroid cancer. Dr. Welch, a professor at Dartmouth University, has spoken out about wasteful and harmful procedures done in the name of prevention. He is a compelling writer, has written several books aimed at people who are not doctors, and has captured the essence of the thyroid cancer screening controversy in this article , published in JAMA today. Briefly, he applauds the recommendations of the USPSTF which state that there is no evidence that looking for thyroid cancer in people who have no concerning symptoms (symptoms such as a neck lump, difficulty swallowing or hoarseness) helps them. He looks at the population data on thyroid cancer, first evidence out of Finland that suggested that nearly everyone probably has a small thyroid cancer if you look hard enough, and evidence that discovering and treat...

There is enthusiasm in politics about reducing regulation to stimulate creativity and economic growth. Maybe. But reduction in oversight of medication and medical devices by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will probably lead to a proliferation of expensive potions and gadgets that don't actually help. This week, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article detailing the near miss associated with an injectable monoclonal antibody for Alzheimer's disease. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't work.) Authors Chana Sacks, Jerry Avorn and Aaron Kesselheim detail the saga of Solanezumab, a drug that attacks the protein in the brain that is associated with Alzheimer's dementia. A monoclonal antibody is a molecule that binds to a specific target allowing the immune system to clear it from the body. Solanezumab binds to amyloid beta protein which is increased in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Although it may help clear amyloid protein from pa...