Medicare to Negotiate with Pharmaceutical Industry
In March 2015, Health Attitude: Unraveling and Solving the Complexities of Healthcare was published. One of the recommendations made in the book, to address the spiraling healthcare cost for Americans, was to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs. It was a lone voice at the time, but since then more and more people, including the […]
Drug Pricing Transparency
Last March, I quoted the new Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Alex Azar, as saying, “Change is possible, change is necessary, and change is coming.” I hope so. Change is desperately needed. It remains to be seen if the federal government can make the changes needed and make them fast enough. The biggest barrier […]
Telehealth for Medicare
A bipartisan bill is advancing in the Senate to enable Medicare to fund expanded telehealth for rural areas. The Telehealth Innovation and Improvement Act sounds like a good thing. I have two reservations. First is bureaucracy. The bill would allow The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to test telehealth services of a hospital through […]
