Patients whose incomes and assets place them just above the threshold for the low-income subsidies and those who received prescription drug coverage prior to the availability Medicare Part D are not likely to benefit from the new coverage plan.
Health savings accounts should not be the focus of a strategy to expand health care coverage to the uninsured, but should be considered complementary to more fundamental health care reform.
An attorney argues that for the uninsured and underinsured, the limitations that exist with health saving accounts far outweigh the benefits and could be a threat to the existence of comprehensive health care coverage.
There is much to be gained by integrating ethics and EBM, focusing on the implications of uncertainty for clinical practice and exploring the effect a clinician’s values have on acquisition and application of evidence.
Eitan Neidich, Alon B. Neidich, David A. Axelrod, MD, and John P. Roberts, MD
Geographic disparities in availability of organs for transplant have spawned for-profit companies that help patients get on waitlists in more than one region and arrange travel for them if an organ becomes available.
The Orphan Drug Act of 1983 provides incentives to encourage the development of drugs for rare diseases, but available orphan drugs tend to be expensive and targeted to the more common of the rare diseases.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):776-779. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.pfor2-1508.
The case of Johnson v Kokemoor illuminates the conflict between patients’ right to informed consent and clinicians’ need to learn through practice, a conflict that possibly could be resolved through greater transparency about clinicians’ experience or experience-dependent medical fees.