Money and Finance
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Meb Faber: The Most (Not) Hated Bull Market (LINK) A Dozen Things Learned from Tom Murphy About Capital Allocation and Management (LINK) Paul Graham: Don't Talk to Corp Dev (LINK) A Startup Just Got $30 Million to Shake Up the Garbage Industry...
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Malcolm Gladwell reviews Steven Brill's America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System about how health-care reform went wrong (LINK) Love Him or Hate Him, Bill Ackman...
- States Of Health - By Atul Gawande
This week, the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, which provides health-insurance coverage to millions of people like Sullivan, is slated to go into effect. Republican leaders have described the event in apocalyptic terms, as Republican leaders have...
- Why Placebos Work Wonders
Found via @farnamstreet. Say "placebo effect" and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos....
- Op-ed: Let’s Get Fundamental - By David Brooks
From last week. If I were magically given an hour to help Barack Obama prepare for his health care speech next week, the first thing I’d do is ask him to read David Goldhill’s essay, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in the current...
Money and Finance
John Mauldin: The Healthcare Blues
For this week’s issue of Time magazine, the cover story is Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, by Steven Brill. I had to have something to read while the plane was taking off, and that turned out to be it. (Since I got my iPad I no longer carry books, so I make sure I have something to peruse while waiting to be able to use my electronics in the air.) I have read work by Steve Brill in the past and like his style, so even though I don’t usually read Time, I picked up this issue on health care.
I wish I could get every voter in America to read that article and then go to the Internet, Google the piece, and read the comments. I don’t agree with all he wrote, but he does a marvelous job of giving us the picture on just how broken the American healthcare system is in terms of costs. He goes into detail about how hospitals create those staggering bills. If you have private insurance or a government plan, you don’t have to pay those prices, but what if you don’t? The billing system is out of control: $1.50 for a 1.5-cent acetaminophen pill (Tylenol). A simple niacin tablet marked up 240 times. Routine products like gauze marked up 10 times. Billing for a lamp shade? Are you serious? Double and triple billing for routine items that no insurance company or government agency will pay for, but that you will be billed for if you are on your own. You have read the stories or heard them from friends, but Brill makes it real.
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Related article: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
Related previous post: Steven Brill on Charlie Rose
- Links
Meb Faber: The Most (Not) Hated Bull Market (LINK) A Dozen Things Learned from Tom Murphy About Capital Allocation and Management (LINK) Paul Graham: Don't Talk to Corp Dev (LINK) A Startup Just Got $30 Million to Shake Up the Garbage Industry...
- Links
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Steven Brill's America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System about how health-care reform went wrong (LINK) Love Him or Hate Him, Bill Ackman...
- States Of Health - By Atul Gawande
This week, the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, which provides health-insurance coverage to millions of people like Sullivan, is slated to go into effect. Republican leaders have described the event in apocalyptic terms, as Republican leaders have...
- Why Placebos Work Wonders
Found via @farnamstreet. Say "placebo effect" and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos....
- Op-ed: Let’s Get Fundamental - By David Brooks
From last week. If I were magically given an hour to help Barack Obama prepare for his health care speech next week, the first thing I’d do is ask him to read David Goldhill’s essay, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in the current...