January 2022 – Page 4 – The Health Care Blog

Simple Bills are Not So Simple

Jan 5, 2022

By MATTHEW HOLT

I went for an annual physical with my doctor at One Medical in December. OK it wasn’t actually annual as the last time I went was 2 & 1/2 years ago, but it was covered under the ACA, and my doc Andrew Diamond was bugging me because I’m old & fat. So in I went.

I had a general exam and great chat for about 45 minutes. Then I had blood work & labs (cholesterol, A1C, etc) and a TDAP vaccination as it had been more than 10 years since I’d had one.

Today, about one month later, I got an email asking me to pay One Medical. So being a difficult human, I thought I would go through the process and see how much a consumer can be expected to understand about what they should pay.

Here’s the email from One Medical saying, “you owe us money.”

The Simpson’s Explain Healthcare

Jan 4, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

Happy New Year! We’re starting 2022 full of hope and renewed optimism. Oh, wait; not so much. We’re not only still in a pandemic, the Omicron variant is the most infectious one yet. Daily cases are setting new records. Our hospitals are full again. Our beleaguered healthcare workers – the ones who haven’t already thrown in the towel – are at their breaking points. Two years in, and we still don’t have enough tests. We’re in the greatest public health crisis in a century, yet our legislators are taking power away from public health officials, and their angry constituents are forcing many of those officials to quit. We have effective vaccines, but millions still refuse to take them.

The Simpsons – especially, Homer — has the right word for this: D’oh!

Fall Risk: It’s All in Your Head

Jan 3, 2022

By HENRY MAHNCKE

More than one in four senior citizens fall each year, making it the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries in older adults. Anyone with a loved one at high risk of falls can tell you it creates constant worry and curtails many of life’s pleasures. And, if that loved one has fallen and broken a hip, too many of those caregivers can share the oft-told tale of how that break was the beginning of the end.

As our population grows and ages, the costs of this widespread risk multiply. However, recent breakthroughs in the science of brain health demonstrate that we could be taking relatively low-cost, highly scalable, steps to reduce these risks.