October 25, 2024 — At the very outset of this week’ s International Weight Bias Summit in Montreal, one thing was plain see. Weight bias in healthcare is an area to focus on for much needed action. How can we accept this? People seeking care for obesity and health conditions that may (or may not) be related to it […]
April 28, 2024 — Daniella Lamas is a critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She recalls telling the wife of a patient who was dying something she did not want to hear about her husband’s care. The woman told Lamas: “Why should I believe you? I don’t think that I do.” The Imperative for Trust […]
March 15, 2024 — Prior authorizations are a driving force in the burnout of physicians, denial of medical care, and the profitability of health insurance and pharmacy benefit plans. By one estimate, healthcare providers spend $35 billion every year on chasing down prior authorizations so that their patients can receive the care they need – whether that is a […]
January 7, 2024 — We are living is a time of concern about mistrust, misinformation, and polarization. Edelman has been warning us for years now about deepening distrust that promotes misinformation because people do not know what to believe. It promotes polarization because they come to trust only people with beliefs similar to their own. As we confront misinformation, healthy […]
November 22, 2023 — The economics of healthcare bedevil us. Spending on it, with occasional interruptions, goes up year after year. Some countries spend less to get more, but the story is universal. The better we get at healing our health problems, the more we seem to spend on healthcare. In the case of obesity care, medical research has […]
November 19, 2023 — “I am.” These two words define so many struggles we face in public discourse today. People define their own identities in diverse ways and fiercely defend them. Disparage a person’s identity and you are attacking them. What follows is not gentle, rational, or easily calmed. Right now, we see how potent it is in public […]
January 15, 2023 — Workers at the largest health system in the U.S., HCA, this week accused the system of putting profits ahead of patient care and health. We regularly hear from obesity care providers about insurers using lame excuses to deny coverage for obesity meds or surgery for lame reasons. This happens even when the health plan covers […]
October 13, 2021 — In so many ways, COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down, and the disruption continues. Casual – and annoying – talk about pandemic weight gain continues to swirl, thought the data on this tells a very mixed story. But something more serious is getting less attention – a sharp spike in eating disorders for young […]
August 6, 2021 — It is a jarring headline. U.S. health systems cost the most and perform the worst in comparison to ten other wealthy countries. In fact, the comparison is not even close. So what does it mean to be dead last in healthcare? Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia have the top performing health systems. The list also […]
December 3, 2020 — We didn’t expect this: COVID-19 is a boon to the health insurance industry. Despite a health crisis killing someone every minute in the U.S., costs for medical care are down. That’s because of people avoiding or delaying healthcare – possibly putting their health at risk. But for health insurers, that means a big increase in […]
