The Price We Pay
What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It
by Marty Makary · first published 2019
80% recommend20% neutral
One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of price-gouging, middlemen, and a series of elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can d
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…the system. The problem is hospital billing and financial scams pulled by hospitals, a majority of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health. I highly recommend reading The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It to understand the real issues with healthcare in the US today.
on “The Secret Society of Lightning Strike Survivors” ↗If you like this, you might enjoy The Price We Pay[0] by Marty Makary. It talks about the incentives in the US health system, and how they combine to create a system where even people with insurance can end up with unmanageable medical debt. The book…
on “Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt” ↗I thought ‘The Price We Pay’ by Marty Makary was a great way to dive into some of the reasons of how expensive and complex the US Healthcare system is. Here’s a quick summary of the book: https://alijiwani1.medium.com/summary-of-the-price-we-pay-4b...
on “US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal” ↗…state medical boards would deter bad actors from delivering wasteful or unnecessary care. The fee-for-service financial system heavily incentivizes over treatment. If you don't believe me then read "The Price We Pay" by Dr. Marty Makary. It documents many such incidents for which the providers were never punished. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/price-we-pay-9781635575910/
on “'United Healthcare' using DMCA against Luigi Mangione images” ↗…achieve net positive results. This is a complex topic with no tl;dr possible. If you want to be able to participate in discussions on a rational, quantitative basis then a good starting point is "The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It" by Marty Makary, MD. It goes into the numbers far better than I can cover in a short HN comment. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/price-we-pay-9781635574128/
on “The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level” ↗For those who want to really understand the impact that PMBs play on the overall US healthcare system I highly recommend reading the "The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It" by Marty Makary, MD. The system of legalized kickbacks that they use isn't widely recognized but it will have to be reformed if we ever want to bring…
on “UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%” ↗If you want to understand the hidden cross-subsidies in the US healthcare financing system then a good place to start is the book "The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It" by Dr. Marty Makary. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/price-we-pay-9781635574128/
on “US commercial insurers pay 254% of Medicare for the same hospital procedures” ↗…pharmaceuticals, and Mark Cuban seems to be doing a good job with CostPlus Drugs. (Valisure is also pretty interesting, doing in-house validation of generics). Marty Makary wrote a book a couple years back, The Price We Pay on the wicked knot of a problem that is US health care. For those mildly interested, there was a Peter Attia Podcast inteview a while back that covers the gist of it: https://peterattiamd.com/martymakary/…
on ““Amateur” programmer fought cancer with 50 Nvidia Geforce 1080Ti” ↗