2 Docs Talk: The podcast about healthcare, the science of medicine and everything in between.

If you've ever tried to figure out the price of a medical procedure, you know it's not that easy. In fact, research shows that complete pricing for medical procedures is unavailable when requested over one-third of the time. 

As healthcare deductibles rise and indidviduals are affected more and directly by these costs, the issue of pricing transparency is growing. In this episode we talk about the problem posed by opaque medical pricing practices. We also dig into two innovative practice models that solve this transparency problem, as well as a few other issues in the delivery of healthcare and medicine.

Resources:

Surgery Center of Oklahoma

Turntable Health

Iora Health

JAMA: Availability of Consumer Prices from US Hospitals for a Common Surgical Procedure

Vaccines are both one of the most widely used and most widely misunderstood preventive medical treatments available. People have concerns about autism, efficacy, the promotion of unhealthy behaviors. We dig into the evidence on some of those topics, as well as take a look at the effectiveness of vaccines against some of the scariest disease of our time - including cancer.

NEJM study on vaccines and autism

Lancet study on vaccines and autism

Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality an ebook by the Institute of Medicine that states, "The evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between MMR vaccine and autism."

About Cancer vaccines

2014-2015 Flu vaccine info - why it was less effective, but did reduce disease severity

Information on current research into an ebola vaccine

Screening mammography is widely used throughout the U.S. and is thought of as a great success in the prevention of breast cancer deaths.

But what does the evidence say? Are we getting what we are paying for with mammography, or simply shouldering the extra cost of false positives and overdiagnosis? We examine these issues and more on this episode of 2 Docs Talk.

References:

What does the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) do?

USPSTF current (2009) breast cancer screening recs 

USPSTF proposed (2015) breast cancer screening recs

American Cancer Society updated breast cancer screening recs

American College of Obstetricians and Radiologists breast cancer screening recs

American College of Radiology breast cancer screening recs

Switzerland's stance on screening mammography

Cost of false positive mammograms

BMJ study that showed no benefit from screening mammography performed in 1980's

JAMA Oncology study on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)

An excellent (and long!) discussion of overdiagnosis and screening mammography

Since March 2010, health care in the U.S. has been subject to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

There is a significant amount of confusion about what exactly this law does or does not do. In this episode, we talk about the key provisions of the law and how it affects the delivery of healthcare in the U.S.

We cover:

In this episode we refer to the following information:

Insurance companies requesting rate reviews under Obamacare