This is the second in a series of conversations I had with some open-minded colleagues who also deeply want to seen meaningful change in the U.S. healthcare system. The person I primarily responded to mentioned a chapter in Pursuing the Triple Aim. Here is what I wrote back to him: I...
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I’m in an email group that is all in agreement that the U.S. healthcare system is exorbitantly expensive and needs reform. We come from wildly different backgrounds. The variety of perspectives is wonderful. However, a claim of some of the contributors is that aggressive medical therapy of cardiovascular disease (CVD) chronic...
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2060 was reviewed in the latest issue of the journal Family Medicine. Here is the link: https://journals.stfm.org/familymedicine/2023/november-december/br-salzman-0214/ I won’t repeat the entire review here, but here are the concluding thoughts: Dr Young describes health care in other developed countries that provides better outcomes for substantially lower costs and makes the case...
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2060 is getting great reviews on Amazon. Order 2060 here. For those of you who haven’t purchased 2060, I present Chapter 1. July 12, 2060 Willis Smith walked towards the front doors of the Prairie Oaks nursing home as he had for the umpteenth time in the last six months. This...
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I am thrilled to announce the publication of my new novel, 2060. Here is a link (but it’s on all the major publishing websites) https://www.amazon.com/2060-Richard-Young-ebook/dp/B0C3826FZ1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=18IJKL4Y8V8ST&keywords=2060&qid=1691704103&s=books&sprefix=2060%2Cstripbooks%2C127&sr=1-1 Here is the teaser: A realistic portrayal of the future dystopian realities of the American healthcare system. Willis Smith lives a Gen-Z nightmare. He has survived...
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The topic today is some of the older diabetes treatments. I’ll cover some of the newer agents–jardiance, ozempic, trulicity, and so on–next month. The cost-effectiveness literature covers individual drugs and overall goals such as “intensive glucose control” or “goal of normoglycemia.” Before I get into the details, I will try to...
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Since diabetes was the disease that started me on this journey, I’ll get into it now. I’ll break this huge issue into smaller posts. Since I went into great detail about the methods of the literature with the hypertension post, I’ll keep these shorter. Screening for and preventing diabetes does not...
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I’m on an email group whose members are heavy into the money side of healthcare. They are fighting back against our exorbitantly expensive healthcare system. The members of this group know a lot about the macro-economics of healthcare—overall spend, spend by major categories, some cross-national comparisons—and the finance of healthcare—carve-outs, loss...
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A very smart person in the healthcare benefits space wrote that family physicians can’t influence much the top 25 most costly DRGs in hospitals. Here was my response: There are many reasons this isn’t true. But it’s understandable that a benefits or administrative person would have no inkling of this, because...
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Recently I was in a group email discussion about primary care. This group is mostly people on the business/benefits side of healthcare. All members of this group have shown that they think the current U.S. healthcare system is wasteful and unsustainable. One of the members said that Medicaid increased primary care...
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