MTT #111: Why are patients paying more before they get care?

In this week’s episode of Medicine: The Truth, hosts Jeremy Corr and Dr. Robert Pearl dig for the facts beneath healthcare’s biggest headlines. Today’s show opens with a problem more Americans are facing every year: rising out-of-pocket costs and the growing demand that patients pay before they receive care.

Pearl explains that the listener’s concern is increasingly the rule, not the exception. Total health costs per employee now average more than $20,000 a year, including premiums and out-of-pocket obligations. With projections for next year showing costs rising another 9% to 11%, workers are likely to shoulder an even greater financial burden.

But higher deductibles are only part of the problem. Doctors and hospitals are increasingly asking patients to pay out-of-pocket costs in advance before scheduling non-emergency procedures. Pearl says 92% of U.S. healthcare providers now either strongly encourage or require advance payment, up from 81% a year earlier. That means a patient who needs a hernia repair, gallbladder surgery, ACL repair or other painful but non-emergency procedure may be asked to pay thousands of dollars before care can proceed.

For Pearl, this is a warning sign of a larger affordability crisis. As premiums, deductibles, drug prices and hospital charges rise, medical costs are increasingly being treated like a hot potato, passed from the federal government to states, from insurers to employers and from employers to workers.

Here are the other major storylines from episode 111:

President Trump has nominated Dr. Heidi Overton to lead the FDA following Marty Makary’s departure. Her support for scaling back childhood vaccine recommendations has already drawn concern from Senate Health Committee chair Dr. Bill Cassidy.

The battle between politics and science is expanding. Pearl points to HHS hiring an Army doctor to investigate unsupported claims that thousands of U.S. service members died after receiving COVID vaccines, despite Pentagon reports finding no vaccine-related deaths.

Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines remain one of the most exciting areas in oncology. Early Moderna and Merck data in melanoma are promising, though the full results have not yet been published.

A new FDA-approved drug for advanced pancreatic cancer has generated enthusiasm because it extended life in patients who had already failed chemotherapy. But the drug is expected to cost about $480,000 a year.

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