Researchers released a cost-benefit analysis, laid out in the New England Journal of Medicine, that shows that it may be safe and cost-effective to release patients who have complication-free heart attacks from the hospital after three days instead of the usual five or six days.

Here is the accompanying editorial "The Length of the Hospital Stay after Myocardial Infarction" in the same issue.

Interestingly, the article states that the $50,000 cost for a year of kidney dialysis is widely used as a benchmark for deciding if medical care is worth the social benefit. In other words, if a medical treatment costs more than $50,000 and only adds a single year to your lifetime survival, it is likely to be denied.

For those that enjoy the big picture view, you may find an series of articles in the Boston Review interesting. The Boston Review is a political and literary forum whose purpose is to foster politically engaged, intellectually honest, and morally serious debate about fundamental issues of the day. In its most recent issue, it offers a debate on the social determinants of health entitled "Is Equality Good Medicine?"

The lead article is entitled Justice is Good for Our Health (How greater economic equality would promote public health) by Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy, and Ichiro Kawachi.

There are eight responses to the article.



[This message has been edited by Gary Peterson (edited 03-16-2000).]