"The enterprise of medicine has both scientific and moral dimensions, and they're inextricably balanced"
Dr Vikas Saini is a Cardiologist and President of the Lown Institute, where he leads a non-partisan think tank advocating bold ideas for a just and caring system for health. With a unique background combining philosophy and medicine, Dr. Saini has spent decades examining the intersection of ethics, evidence, and economics in healthcare. His work on the Social Responsibility Index challenges traditional hospital rankings by measuring what truly matters: equity, value, and patient outcomes rather than reputation and revenue.
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"When hospitals fail to make access to assistance easy and predictable, it drives people away from care and erodes trust in our entire system," Saini explained. "Right now, the burden is on patients to navigate a broken system. That has to change."
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“This isn’t a case of red states versus blue states, or rural areas versus cities,” Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute, said in a June 2 news release from the organization. “We’re seeing massive disparities in charity care policies between hospitals that are practically around the corner from each other. Unfortunately, low- and middle-income patients are the ones who deal with the consequences.”
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The recently released study was conducted by the Boston-based Lown Institute, an independent healthcare think tank. The organization examined 1,800 nonprofit hospitals in 20 states, using average numbers from 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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“If we’re really going to grapple with the problems of health care, which are so expensive, unaffordable, driving medical debt — all the things that everybody knows about and are problematic — I think this is a moment to rethink some of that and ask: can we have more transparency?" Saini said. “Can we really try to understand what the hell is going on, how the money is flowing?”
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The Lown institute keeps an eye on fraud, waste, and dysfunction in American healthcare, and every year they present the Shkreli awards, named for infamous pharmabro Martin Shkreli. Here we summarize the top 10 terrible operators of 2024.
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"The whole idea that that there's a functioning market is a fantasy," Saini said "Given that fact, the way money flows is not at all rational, and that's why we get what we get in terms of the prices of everything."
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From selling deceased patients' body parts to denying cancer treatment over upfront payments, the Lown Institute's annual Shkreli Awards spotlight the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction in American healthcare. Dr. Vikas Saini, President of the Lown Institute, walks us through 2024's "winners" and what they reveal about the state of our healthcare system.
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We’re bringing you highlights from this year’s ceremony – featuring things like human bones for sale without the consent of the deceased or their families, phantom urinary catheters, and so much more – and some reflections from the Lown Institute’s president, Dr. Vikas Saini.
“Showing all these stories together paints a picture of a health care system in desperate need of transformation,” Saini said at the ceremony. “Not just because the stories are shocking, but because often what they're depicting, like Martin Shkreli's infamous price hike, is perfectly legal.”
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