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Patients are not free to decide their own care even though medical autonomy is supposedly protected by law.The new kid in the waiting room
The receptionist asked me to verify my date of birth.
I gave her Gracie’s.
For years, I have encouraged fellow caregivers to pay attention to their own health rather than waiting until a crisis forces the issue. This experience has only reinforced that conviction.
She glanced down at the chart in her hand and then back at me with a puzzled expression. Before she could say anything, I caught myself.
“Oh ... that’s my wife’s birthday.”
After 40 years as a family caregiver through surgeries, appointments, hospital admissions, medications, insurance forms, and enough medical paperwork to clear a small forest, I had automatically answered with the date I have given thousands of times before.
This time, however, I was the patient.I was at the cancer center for imaging and treatment planning in preparation for radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Thanks to routine screenings and excellent physicians, it was caught early. The prognosis is excellent.
Still, it felt strange.
I have spent most of my adult life in hospitals because of someone else. This time, they called my name.
Looking around the waiting room, I realized I was easily the youngest man there. That does not happen to me very often anymore. Later, one staff member told me most of their patients are in their 70s and beyond. Sometimes, they see men in their 60s like me, and every so often someone in his 50s.
For this visit, I was the new kid.
I took a chair off to the side, careful not to intrude on this fraternity of men who seemed to know the ropes. They reminded me of the old men who gathered at Nick’s grocery and gas station near my childhood home in rural South Carolina. As a boy, I would stop in for a soda and candy bar while they held court around the coffee pot, solving problems that ranged from weather and crops to politics and church business.
The subjects changed from day to day. The cadence never did.
Men of a certain age possess a remarkable conversational gift. They can begin with trout streams and end with urologists without anyone noticing where the turn occurred.
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True to form, this conversation drifted toward prostate cancer, treatments, and the assorted indignities that accompany aging. One fellow described an examination during which the sheet covering him slipped.
Before he could react, the nurse matter-of-factly told him, “Don’t worry. If I see something I’ve never seen before, I’ll kill it.”
Such is the sort of thing you expect to hear in a cancer clinic in Montana.
The men laughed.
I raised an eyebrow and thought, “How comforting.”
But I still laughed.
Soon enough, they called me back. The technicians positioned my legs, explained the process, and slid me into a machine that looked remarkably like something from an old “Star Trek” episode. If memory serves, it resembled the device that kept Spock alive after somebody stole his brain.
After the instructions were complete, they eased me into position and left the room.
A few minutes later, one of the technicians returned looking slightly sheepish.
“We have a bit of a challenge.”
“Do tell,” I replied.
“There’s a gas bubble.”
The expression on my face evidently communicated that I was not following.
She delicately clarified.
“It’s in ... you.”
“Oh.”
I considered several responses, including one with my outstretched index finger that would have made my four brothers proud and the medical staff considerably less appreciative. Fortunately, decades of maturity prevailed.
“What do you recommend?” I asked.
“Maybe take a walk and see if anything happens.”
So there I was, strolling through the halls of a cancer center, trying to solve a problem that five boys growing up under one roof would have regarded as entirely manageable without professional consultation. At times, our household rivaled the campfire scene in “Blazing Saddles.”
The problem was that they had instructed me to drink a substantial amount of water beforehand to achieve the proper imaging. Solving one problem too enthusiastically threatened to create another.
Men over 50 approach certain situations with caution for good reasons.
Eventually, however, everything worked itself out.
Ahem.
The imaging was completed, the planning was finished, and in a few days, I will return to begin treatment.
As I left, I noticed the bell hanging in the hallway. I have seen bells like that before. Patients ring them when treatment ends.
Lord willing, I will ring that bell myself within a month.
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Driving home, I thought about those older men in the waiting room. None of them appeared eager to be there, but neither did they seem intimidated by it.
They knew where to park. They knew where the coffee was. They knew which jokes were worth telling.
In short, they knew the territory.
Eventually, if you stay on any road long enough, you stop asking for directions and start giving them.
One day, perhaps sooner than I would like to admit, I may be the guy telling stories to the new kid who walks through the door — even if the story involves a gas bubble that needed to be walked off.
For years, I have encouraged fellow caregivers to pay attention to their own health rather than waiting until a crisis forces the issue. This experience has only reinforced that conviction.
Prostate cancer is often called a silent disease.
Mine was.
Fortunately, silent does not have to mean deadly.
Big Pharma’s miracle drugs have a nasty side effect
My husband has bipolar disorder. I know firsthand that the medications he takes do not merely improve his quality of life — they make our family life possible.
I am thankful for the drug companies whose products and innovations help keep my family together. But that does not mean I trust Big Pharma.
The pharmaceutical industry’s incentives are often at odds with the people it treats.
The pharmaceutical industry has helped create a culture in which Americans are taking more prescription drugs than at any point in history. Last year, more than two-thirds of Americans reported taking a prescription drug daily, and 26% said they take four or more.
No wonder the average price of prescription medications in the United States has risen by about 37% in the last decade. Many of the most popular brand-name medications have doubled in price over the past 15 years.
One study found that prescription drug prices in the United States are nearly three times higher than prices for the same medications in 32 comparable countries. Family health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored plans jumped 26% from 2020 to 2025, outpacing wage growth and inflation.
A quarter of Americans recently reported having difficulty paying for their medications. About 19% said they had skipped or rationed doses because of the cost. Research indicates that medical expenses are now the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in this country, surpassing job loss.
I understand that high prices help fund the astronomical cost of clinical trials that test and bring new drugs to market. But Americans have also seen pharmaceutical companies acquire the rights to off-patent drugs and raise prices overnight. They have watched insulin prices climb for years even though insulin is relatively cheap to produce.
Let’s face it: The pharmaceutical industry’s incentives are often at odds with the people it treats.
The same industry that helps my husband is increasingly keeping medications out of reach for many families.
Drug prices would not be so high if Big Pharma did not spend between $13 billion and $14 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising. They would not be so high if the pharmaceutical and health sectors did not consistently spend more on federal lobbying than any other industry.
Those efforts shape the laws and policies that allow current drug prices. The industry clearly views them as worthwhile investments.
Americans spent 12.7% more on pharmaceutical drugs last year than they did in 2024. A significant share of that increase came from popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Roughly 12% of American adults are currently taking one of these drugs, and that number is expected to rise significantly in the coming years.
I am not saying people should not take these medications. That is not for me to say. But I am deeply concerned that, culturally, we increasingly treat medication as the first line of defense for nearly every challenge before seriously exploring other options.
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That concern comes from firsthand experience.
As someone who has battled addiction, I am acutely aware of the power substances can hold over a person’s life. That experience has left me worried about others who may develop dependencies on drugs.
I remember how the opioid crisis destroyed entire communities and caused a staggering number of deaths after companies such as Purdue Pharma aggressively pushed OxyContin while downplaying its risks. That epidemic continues today with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
Is it any wonder some of us remain skeptical of pharmaceutical companies’ motives?
As a parent, I do everything in my power to ensure that my children do not become unnecessarily dependent on medications. I want them to understand that any drug they take should be used carefully and for its intended purpose.
I acknowledge the value of medicine. I deeply respect what the health care industry can do. My own family depends on it.
But respect should not require blindness.
The pharmaceutical industry should remember the families paying the bills, rationing the doses, and wondering whether the medications they need will remain within reach.
Innovation deserves reward. Exploitation does not.
Medicare red tape turned insurers into villains
Imagine your doctor diagnoses you with Alzheimer’s disease, evaluates your needs and risks, and recommends a tailored treatment plan to extend your healthy years. Who should have the final say over whether you pursue that care: you, your family, and your doctor — or an insurance company that has never met you?
For most Americans, the answer is obvious. Doctors and patients should make care decisions.
If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.
Yet in many cases, insurers end up with the final say.
New polling from Market Institute and President Trump’s pollster Fabrizio Ward found that 89% of registered voters believe doctors often choose not to prescribe Alzheimer’s tests or treatments because they know insurers are unlikely to cover them and patients cannot afford to pay out of pocket.
Voters are recognizing a real trend. Alzheimer’s patients have made headlines for benefiting from new treatments, only to receive abrupt coverage denials from their insurance companies.
Treatment allowed one patient, Lori Baetz, to return to her daily routine. When coverage was pulled back, she deteriorated, even getting lost in her own neighborhood. Lori’s neurologist, Dr. Cara Leahy, wrote that her patients are repeatedly denied coverage. Similar denials are happening across the country, including in New Jersey and North Carolina, and across insurers.
Thousands of Americans find these delays and denials unjust. In fact, a shocking 41% of young Americans said the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “acceptable.” One voter from a Market Institute focus group said of insurance companies, “They just want to wear you down ... so you just give up.”
Americans’ frustration is understandable. But insurance companies are often following rules set by the federal government.
The real culprits are the behind-the-scenes government policies that encourage insurers to delay and deny coverage.
The clearest example is a Biden-era Medicare policy known as Coverage with Evidence Development.
After the Food and Drug Administration approved a new generation of Alzheimer’s therapies, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the unprecedented step of limiting Medicare coverage unless patients participated in government-approved studies and met additional requirements.
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That created a second layer of red tape after the FDA had already deemed the therapies safe and effective.
The decision sent a powerful signal throughout the health care system. When Medicare, the nation’s largest health care payer, treats FDA approval as insufficient, private insurers follow.
When Lori’s coverage was denied despite her positive response to treatment, the company described the therapy as “investigational/experimental,” even though the FDA had approved it. The company was following Medicare’s lead. When Medicare treats approved therapies as experimental by requiring additional paperwork and registration, insurers can cite the government’s own policy when denying coverage.
That bad policy worsens the financial and human cost of Alzheimer’s disease.
The lifetime cost of caring for a person with Alzheimer’s exceeds $400,000, with families shouldering roughly 70% of that burden through unpaid caregiving and out-of-pocket expenses.
Meanwhile, Medicare spends roughly $174 billion annually on Alzheimer’s patients, while Medicaid spends another $72 billion, much of it on long-term care. As Alzheimer’s cases double over the next few decades, those costs will continue to climb.
The good news is that treatment could help curb those mounting costs by keeping Americans independent and in the workforce longer.
According to USC Schaeffer research, providing treatment before symptoms fully emerge could add a full year of life, reduce nursing home stays by nearly two years, and lower medical spending by roughly $48,000 per patient. That means more Americans remaining independent, fewer families crushed by caregiving burdens, and more workers preserving their economic productivity.
Every patient who remains independent, stays out of a nursing home, or delays the need for full-time care represents both a human victory and an economic one.
If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.
The FDA is charged with determining whether a therapy is safe and effective. Once it does, CMS should not erect a second regulatory barrier that encourages insurers to do the same.
Until that changes, Americans will continue blaming insurance companies for behavior government policy encourages.
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