While watching the president defending his health reform package on TV today (which is, as we have written in prior posts, an expensive mistake), we found an interesting headline in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Retail Health Clinics Move to Treat Complex Illnesses, Rankling Doctors.”

The Journal writes, “Retail health clinics are adding treatments for chronic diseases such as asthma to their repertoire, hoping to find steadier revenue, but putting the clinics into greater competition with doctors’ groups and hospitals….  The clinics are helping alter the practice of medicine.  Doctors are expanding office hours to evenings and weekends.  Hospitals are opening more urgent-care centers to treat relatively minor health problems.” Read the rest of this entry »

With the healthcare debate raging in the United States, we found the following chart from the OECD to be interesting:

Many Americans fear that we are heading towards a government-controlled, socialized medical system.  But what few seem to realize is that we are essentially already there, at least by some measures.

The governments of Canada and the United Kingdom — the two countries most often mentioned — spend 7.0% and 7.3% of their respective GDPs on healthcare.  The United States, via Medicare, Medicaid, and other smaller programs, also spends 7% of GDP — and a MUCH larger GDP at that! Read the rest of this entry »