Here’s one of my favorite themes: not all health care reform requires an act of Congress. Exhibit A was in my hometown newspaper this week. Someone related an anecdote about a friend having some new prescription eyewear specifically for playing tennis. She inquired if the glasses were expensi...

This week Health and Human Services announced that, as part of a $250 million federal health care reform allocation, $1 million will be awarded to separtely 45 states and the District of Columbia "to help improve the oversight of proposed health insurance premium increases, take action against insur...

What one doctor says about why it's important to discuss costs with patients in the exam room...http://tinyurl.com/2fwutvv....

Last week, my sister Patty told me her work-based health coverage was doubling, to $112 a month. She and co-workers are talking about dropping their coverage. Patty was saying she hardly goes to the doctor and isn’t “getting her money’s worth” for her premium. And I said, “Wait a minute,...

Recently my mom underwent shoulder replacement surgery. Now she’s in a battle over bills because the post-surgery treatments cost more than she was allowed per her insurance contract. And my mom, being a pretty savvy health care consumer, asked about the cost of each procedure and post-operative t...

Did you know that according to a new survey - 47 percent of us agree with charging smokers more for health insurance? 43 percent of us feel the same about people who drink more alcohol than others. But only 26 percent of us feel that overweight people should be charged more. And many large employ...

The new federal health care reform bill provides incentives to receive preventive care and health care services. And the services have been promoted as "free" under health care reform because there is no cost sharing for consumers. But is anything ever really free? Every service we use - wheth...

Financial planners say we should have enough savings to cover six months’ worth of household expenses. Few of us do. But my health plan has a “rainy day” fund. So does my car insurance, and my state’s unemployment insurance and worker compensation fund. State regulators require it as a consu...

We all knew technology was expensive, but how much is it? Check out a dirty little secret of rising health care costs - technology. Don't get me wrong, I use that technology and will be the first to admit it. Learn more about the rising cost of technology in hospitals here. ~Christine at Reg...

We talk a lot on WhatsTheRealCost.org about doing comparison shopping for health care. While not every situation lends itself to that, joint replacement offers good opportunities for comparing not only the joint itself but the doctor and facility doing the work. There are nearly a million joint rep...

Anyone remember the “continuous improvement” trend of the 1980s and 90s workplace?  Well, now it’s arrived at U.S. hospitals. Hospitals aren’t factories, but they do have to be very efficient: have the right equipment in the right place at the right time, for the right patient, from glove...

Would you drive to Colorado for a knee replacement? One man did, find out why. And tell us... how far would you go?...

My mother-in-law works for a local community hospital, and they continue to lose money – even though they have more patients coming in.  Logic tells me that more patients equals more money, but reality isn’t always logical. Cost shifting from Medicare (reimbursing hospitals less for Medicare...

Last week I had an outpatient medical procedure that I’ve had a few times in the past. The test can often prevent cancer, and can be quite costly. Having had some symptoms recently that indicate that something could be wrong – I had the test immediately, no questions asked. In fact, I was so ...

Here at What’s the Real Cost, we’ve been sharing stories about our own and others’ adventures in the health care system that have led us to start thinking differently about what we each can do to lower medical spending. So, I was delighted by a new study about cutting $700 billion a year in...

If you think there’s no reason to shop for health care, check out this doctor’s blog post – her patients were skipping needed care because of high costs, even her own mother. Affordable care was available, as the examples here point out, but it’s hard to find prices and comparis...

Last night I was chatting with a good friend of mine who is single and dating. She’s tried it all – online, blind dates, meeting guys at work, charity events – you name it, she’s been there looking. Some end nicely, others in disaster. But next week she’s going to try something different...

A few weeks back I visited family in New Orleans, and the massive oil spill in the Gulf came up at a family party. My uncle works for a large oil company (I won’t say who, but it’s not BP), and since he is related in the oil industry, he was bombarded with questions about causes, clean up an...

About two months ago I took my six month old to the pediatrician because she is allergic to every single brand of formula we had tried (and we tried every kind on the market). No matter the brand or base, her body’s reaction was terrible. The doctor gave me a free sample of a new special ...

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act (commonly referred to as PPACA – pronounced “P – Paca”) passed Congress and the President signed it into law. Being that this was the largest reform since Medicare and Medicaid in the 60’s, this was big news to me, but what made it even more...

Last night I received some “Explanation of Benefits” forms in the mail from my primary health insurer (Regence). And what I found surprised me. Of the last five doctor’s appointments my daughter has been to, only one has yielded any diagnosis worth following up on. Each office visit was a...

In this economy everyone is focusing on how to cut costs. Commercials on TV are a great example of that. Have you noticed WalMart’s campaign? They started advertising living better while spending less. Car dealers offer years with no interest. And just yesterday I went shopping and found that eve...

Here's one of my pet peeves. A news story says the FDA is about to vastly expand the market for statins (which control cholesterol) so healthy people can take them as "prevention" against heart attacks. But, research says statins can cause diabetes. Experts say it's worth the risk because ...

Last week my hypochondriac cousin told me about her latest ailments – all of which to me sounded like a sinus headache. However, she wasn’t convinced. So she sought out and visited a neurologist, and an MRI later, it was determined that it was just that – a sinus infection. Her concern is w...

Health insurance was born on the concept of neighbors ‘pooling’ their money together to take care of one another. It was this idea - formed in the early 1900s – that brought communities together to help each other pay for medical treatments they couldn’t afford otherwise. As is today, u...

Check out your local or national news sources, open your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and walk into your nearest coffee shop – the talk is on the House’s historic health reform package passage last night. In fact, nothing of this magnitude has touched our health care system since Medicare...

Turn on any news channel this week and you’ll hear predictions about how many votes the Democrats have – or don’t have - to pass Obama’s health care reform bill. Interestingly, if the bill passes, history will write that this Congress passed a historic health care package, marking this ...

Health care reformers are passionate on all sides. Each side commissions studies that support their point, and another side fires back with their own study conflicting the first. The message is lost, and average Americans are struggling to make sense of it all. There’s finger-pointing, placing the...

Do you pay the same for your McDonald’s meal as the guy behind you in line at the drive thru? Or better yet, should you? That’s the type of question the Massachusetts Attorney General (AG) is asking after a statewide investigation of health care costs. The results of the investigation indic...

Last week I took my daughter in for a pediatrician’s office visit. One of those many last minute, scary appointments you make when you have an infant screaming with a fever and you don’t know why. After her examination the diagnosis was apparent: ear infection, and something else -- abnorma...

October 14, 2009 I woke up at 5:30a.m.frantically shaking my husband and shrieking, “I think it’s time!” He was as surprised as I was – I wasn’t due for our first child for another month, and I was scheduled for a c-section in November. We had no idea that my water would just BREAK in the ...

Have you noticed in the health care debate how some people start talking about car insurance? Specifically the argument goes that all drivers are required to purchase car insurance, so why not mandate health insurance the same way and make everyone buy it? The comparison is a little shaky, but ...

There’s a lot of passion in the health reform debate about who should do what. Health plans should take everybody. Premiums should be affordable. The system should be more efficient. I say, "Yes" to all of the above. But there are some things doctors, hospitals, medicines and health plans jus...

Here’s what I want to know: how will health reform being considered by Congress affect what I pay for health insurance? The Senate bill is estimated to cost around $900 billion; the House bill around $1.2 TRILLION (gulp). That money has to come from somewhere and I can’t shake the feeling t...

Have you noticed you can put "e-" in front of just about anything, and we all know what that means? We do so much online today – (r)e-tail, e-zines, e-trading and e-banking. And now there’s e-patient. New research says that 61 percent of us go online for health information from trusted webs...

Real health care reform would put a halt to some of the $700 billion wasted each year in treatment and other expenses that do nothing to improve health. The House bill does adopt new insurance rules and gets nearly everyone covered. But the consensus of news organizations around the country –...

But does it work? Even if we don't say that question aloud, we implicitly ask it in our everyday lives. Each time we consider buying a new product or service, we want to be sure that it does what it says it will do. No one wants to throw away money. But for some reason, when it comes to he...

The other day I got home from work and sorted through the endless amounts of junk mail and bills that I receive day after day. One piece specifically caught my eye this time – what looked like billing from my OB/GYN’s office. When you’re closing in on nine months pregnant, any piece of mail fr...

The other day I got an email from the salon where I get my hair cut. They wanted to let me know they're moving to a new location — a much bigger space. Uh-oh, I thought. And indeed, at the very end, the email said just what I suspected — that as a result of the bigger space, the cost of a haircu...

Did you catch President Obama’s speech to Congress on health care reform last week? He gave an accurate summary of the problems people have in getting, keeping and affording insurance. He even mentioned that medical costs will swamp the federal budget. But he didn’t talk much about how to curb t...

It's pretty amazing how many aspects there are to the ballooning cost of medical care. As I wrote in my last post, prescriptions are one place where we can be more savvy. Another savings area might be less obvious: the storing of medical information. The root of the problem here is inefficient ...

Thinking back on that last post, about how it takes all of us to curb medical spending, reminded me of my personal attitude adjustment on this issue. My health plan puts claims online so I can track them, and also shows what I paid and what the plan paid. That was an eye-opener. I thought I was...

Have you noticed the change? I'm talking about the change in the debate over health care reform. Lots of Washington politicians, now on their August break, have started focusing on health insurance reform rather than health care system reform. It might look like just a little shift in wording, but t...

This doctor has a couple of great stories about the “medical industrial complex” and why health care reform is hard-- http://tinyurl.com/THCB-lobster-and-lap-choley After the lobster-salad analogy, he talks about high-tech driving up medical spending, not always for the better. I could rela...

It's an understatement to say a lot of people are involved in pushing for health care reform. Trying to follow the progress can feel overwhelming. Even when we do our best to stay informed, it's hard at times not to wonder where each of us fits in as individuals. Are the decision-makers going pay at...

Does anybody else feel weird asking the cost of a lab test or a screening or even a check-up? I do. I was looking for a new dentist, one in my neighborhood, and I poked my head in the door of a small clinic and asked the woman at the desk, “How much is a routine cleaning?” Then she asked me, �...

Doesn't it feel as if everywhere you look these days, people are talking about health care reform? It's there on the daytime talk shows and the nightly news. Maybe you know someone who's worried about changes in their job's health plan. As the summer gets into full swing, and we're getting together ...