By Evan Falchuk
Health care expenses are hurting businesses and governments around the world.
But why?
There are a lot of reasons, but the most overlooked is this: people demand life-saving medical care. There is a basic, human desire to want to live long, healthy lives. And so, will health care be the engine of the 21st century economy?
Go to the Washington Times to read my op-ed on it.
By Evan Falchuk
Government can be like the weather – everyone complains about it but no one does anything about it.
At Best Doctors we like to look at obstacles as opportunities to make things better. In this case, I had the chance to help change an old law in Florida that made it hard for companies like ours that serve the international health insurance markets to do business.
It’s exciting to report that we got the law changed. Now, I can also tell you that a major Florida paper, the St. Petersburg Times, published my story yesterday.
Read the story here, it’s a reminder that government really can work.
By Evan Falchuk
What’s Best Doctors all about?
The Mind Your Own Business radio show finds out. Tune in to my recent interview where I’m talking about misdiagnosis, rising health care costs, and how important it is to bring the minds of the top 5% of medical experts to your employees and their families.
Listen to the recording here.
By Evan Falchuk
WBAI in New York interviewed me about the alarming rates of cancer misdiagnosis. As you’ll hear, there are no simple solutions except one: ask questions, and insist that you get the right care.
You can listen to the interview here.
By Evan Falchuk
The government is remaking the health care system in order to pull money out of it.
So what do Americans do?
Look for ways to make money.
By Evan Falchuk
If you’re into health care consumerism, and you like, well, me, you will enjoy my guest blog post at CDHC Solutions Magazine.
CDHC Solutions focuses on consumer-driven health plans. Consumer-driven plans are a form of “high deductible” health coverage that is more popular than ever.
For whatever you want to say about these plans, one thing is clear: they don’t solve the fundamental problem of patients not having enough time with their doctors.
Here’s a taste of what I wrote:
Researchers have been trying to pinpoint the impact of this time starvation on the quality of medical care, and they’re finding disturbing results. A recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that because of time pressures and related factors doctors deliver “error-free” care as rarely as 22% of the time. The researchers called this a “failure to individualize care,” which is a nice way of saying the doctors just weren’t paying enough attention to the needs of their patients.
Read the whole thing here.
By Evan Falchuk
ABC News reports on the murky world of discount medical plans. They scored a series of quotes from me, including this one:
If your gut tells you that you need to wonder about what you’re hearing, it’s a bad sign. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Read the whole thing.
Elsewhere, David Williams of the Health Business Blog now has the transcript of our podcast up on his site. He’s split up the interesting discussion into two parts, with the first part here and the second part here.
By Evan Falchuk
David Williams, the Charlie Rose of the health care blogosphere, recently interviewed me.
You can listen to the audio of our wide-ranging talk on David’s always-interesting Health Business Blog.
We talked about health care reform, health IT, social media, health care quality, patient navigation, and the role of Best Doctors.
Give it a listen, and visit back to David’s blog regularly.
What’s your opinion on the subjects we talked about?
By Evan Falchuk
I was interviewed today by Employee Benefit Adviser, one of the leading publications in the employee benefits market. I spoke with EBA’s Editor in Chief, John Ortman about trends in the health care market, problems with the quality of health care around the world, and, of course, Best Doctors.
The podcast is here.
By Evan Falchuk
I gave a speech yesterday at the Midwest Business Group on Health’s 30th Annual Conference. The MBGH is one of the country’s leading organizations on health care, and its members include the leading innovators and thought leaders on health care in America. It was a privilege to present to them.
I spoke about why health care just isn’t a consumer business, in spite of all of the efforts to turn people into health care “consumers.”
Read the text of my remarks below the fold, it was a very interesting day.
