Introduction to My Blog

When it comes to our own and our family’s health, we all tend to believe that money is no object. If you have a sick child you don’t ask the doctor for the cheap medication that will not cure the disease. If you are having severe chest pain you don’t ask the ambulance driver how much it will cost to get to the Emergency Room. Accessing medical care and improving your health is not like buying a toaster. Who can put a price on your child’s and your own lives?

At the same time, it does cost money. You pay for at least a portion of your insurance benefits with your employer often paying the majority of the cost. The portion you pay seems to get bigger and bigger every day while at the same time the amount your employer pays also grows larger and larger. After paying for those benefits, you still have to pay part of the cost of the actual care either through deductibles, co-insurance or co-payments. (In future blogs we can get into the differences between those types of payments.)

So whether we like it or not, money does matter in health. The trick is to get the best care and spend all the money needed to get that care and not a penny more. You need to work at getting the right care, at the right time, for the correct diagnosis. I will help you do that. Through this blog, I will do the same for all of you as I have done for major corporate leaders for the past ten years. I will help you make sense of the interface between your benefits, your medical care when you get sick and even your own actions in trying to prevent disease. I never claim to have all the answers but I always can find the answers I don’t know. My background as a practicing physician, as a health care executive and as an advisor to major corporations and to government gives me a unique prospective that allows me to see the medical and financial sides of these issues. Mainly however I am a father, a grandfather and a husband, and I must add a patient in my own right with a variety of the diseases those above 50 are prone to. This is what makes me see this through your eyes. I understand that coping with a disease is never cut and dry and always involves family, emotions, spirituality and even attention to the little details (How will I get home from that procedure if I can’t drive?).

So Welcome to my blog; “Thoughts on Health, Wealth and Life”. Your guide to medicine, money and the way they should work together to give you the best care money can buy.