A few years ago, Dennis Quaid nearly lost his newborn twins to a massive heparin overdose. A nurse had inadvertently, repeatedly, admininstered adult heparin doses to both infants — they nearly bled to death internally. Now The Quaid Foundation is an outlet for Quaid’s passionate patient safety advocacy, and it has produced a documentary profiling families affected by preventable medical errors to educate the public.

Check out the preview after the jump: Read more…

The results are in. If you want to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease, scientists have a take-home message for you: good clean living is meaningful, just not significant.

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If you are under age 26, you may be wondering where the new healthcare legislation leaves you. The rules for continued coverage under your parents’ plan are complex and convoluted, which aligns them with the healthcare bill as a whole. But there’s good news.

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In case you were under the misconception that health and life insurers care about your health and wellbeing, recent research will leave you disillusioned. In an American Journal of Public Health article, physician researchers indicate their disturbing findings: as of June 2009, insurers owned $1.9 billion worth of fast food stock.

What does this mean? If you stay healthy, insurers profit because they don’t pay out. If you choose unhealthy habits like a fast food diet (Super Size Me, anyone?), insurers profit because their asset value rises. Through their investments in Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Burger King, Yum! Brands (purveyors of Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell etc.) and Wendys/Arbys, the health and life insurance industry has covered itself in the face of continued poor American health habits.

Where is their incentive to keep you well? There isn’t any. To anyone who wants to let the free market work in healthcare, here’s yet more proof that it already does. Unfortunately that means it’s not about health or care, just profits. Have a french fry.

Just as I was ranting about the lack of transparency and high variability in healthcare pricing, Leslie Ramirez, MD, was blogging about the exact same thing over at KevinMD.com. This internist has actually done something about it, for patients lucky enough to live in Chicago.

Leslie’s List is a free community resource that allows patients to compare costs for prescriptions, tests, and clinics in the Chicago area. Unlike the 3 sites I profiled earlier, which provide early-stage, variable, and rather unreliable pricing for healthcare services, Leslie’s List provides real-world pricing at individual facilities.

Case in point: the Lumbar Spine MRI that the Healthcare Blue Book lists at a general $815? Well, Leslie’s List helpfully lists prices by facility, revealing the horrifying truth that the exact same MRI varies from $325 at one location to over $3800 at another. That’s right — a nearly 1200% difference based on whether you choose a free-standing imaging center or a hospital to peform the scan. Personally, I don’t feel that strongly about subsidizing my local hospital.

Leslie Ramirez is one physician who truly believes pricing transparency can improve patient care. Thanks, Leslie.

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