In addition, the GAO report found that bureaucracy was deterring firms from applying for the small business credit, particularly given that the credit itself was “insubstantial” for most firms. The report notes that claiming the credit requires “15 calculations, 11 of which are based on seven worksheets, some of which request multiple columns of information.” Furthermore, “tax preparers told us it could take their clients from 2 to 8 hours or possibly longer to gather the necessary information to calculate the credit and that the tax preparers spent, in general, 3 to 5 hours calculating the credit.” All of which raises an obvious question: What small business owner wants to – or is even able to – spend a full working day gathering paperwork to claim a credit that may amount to a few thousand dollars at best?

Federal law bans payments for organs. But given the need, we wondered what Americans thought about compensation for three kinds of donations that can be made while people are alive: kidneys, bone marrow and a portion of liver big enough to help someone whose liver is failing.

So we asked 3,000 adults across the country as part of the NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll, and here’s what they told us.

If compensation took the form of credits for health care needs, about 60 percent of Americans would support it. Tax credits and tuition reimbursement were viewed favorably by 46 percent and 42 percent, respectively. Cash for organs was seen as OK by 41 percent of respondents.

NPR report.

Bate’s team found that product registration – that is, registering a drug product with the local government – was associated with higher quality than non-registered drugs. However, a better indicator a drug was not counterfeit was its availability at chain drug stores. In an attempt to maintain a good reputation, chain drug stores policed their suppliers and were better able to keep their inventory free of counterfeits than were local government regulations.

$20 billion of your tax dollars to promote ObamaCare.

Study: 96% of chain restaurant entrees exceed USDA limits.

“Good cholesterol” not so good: It doesn’t lower your risk of heart disease.

 These results have generated a lot of controversy, and even some criticism. We understand the controversy given the impression that U.S. health care spending is too high. However, we find the criticism both irrelevant and misguided, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

More on cancer care in the United States and Europe at the Health Affairs blog.

Adding to concerns related to reimbursement, physicians continue to pay incredibly expensive malpractice premiums and nearly a quarter of physicians admitted to practicing defensive medicine…

Most doctors enter medicine with the thoughts of healing patients on a daily basis, but paperwork can often come between the doctor and the patient. According to the Medscape survey, 33% of physicians spend 10 or more hours per week on administrative activities. The burden will only keep piling on come 2013 when the Physician Sunshine Act is implemented, adding 237,000 paperwork hours by forcing physicians to reveal the minutiae of their relationships with medical supply manufacturers and distributors.

More on dissatisfied physicians at American Action Forum.

This guy is getting a chemotherapy regimen for colon cancer that we stopped using about 15 years ago. His medical oncologist was practicing the best medicine of the late 1980s, but we were in 2006. The other drugs he was being prescribed were totally unnecessary. But the doctor could get a substantial markup and make a substantial amount of money by selling them.

Greedy patients.

Another patient of mine had early colon cancer. Three doctors had told her she should not get chemotherapy. She decided she wanted it, and she went doctor-shopping until she found a doctor who would give it to her.

Greedy everybody.

I blame patients, I blame doctors, I blame hospitals, I blame drug companies, I blame insurance companies.

Interview about Otis Webb Brawley’s “How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick In America” (St. Martin’s Press).

More from Bruce Japsen on improving access to physicians in the NYT.

Thirteen percent of sick Americans thought they were given the wrong diagnosis, test, or treatment. About 15% of sick Americans thought they got tests they didn’t need and 18% thought they didn’t get the tests they did. More than a quarter of sick Americans thought they were not well managed.

Aaron Carroll generally deploring the results.

In the first bar, there is a classically underwritten distribution of insurance costs: the 18-year-old pays $800 in premiums, and the 64-year-old pays $4,800: six times as much. Then, in the second bar, 3-to-1 community rating is imposed, which redistributes the cost of premiums. Now, 18-year-olds must pay $1,400 for insurance—a 75 percent increase—so that 64-year-olds can pay 13 percent less… after adverse selection, the oldest policyholder ends up paying more than he would have under free-market underwriting: $4,900 instead of $4,800. A government policy aimed at forcing young people to subsidize premiums for the elderly ends up driving up costs for everybody.