In an Axios column, Drew Altman from the Kaiser Family Foundation looks at total family spending for health including taxes and health benefits, and why people need to understand it to assess proposals like Medicare-for-All. Read the understanding health care spending column.

Kaiser has created a calculator to help families learn what they pay, both directly and indirectly for health care. Take a look.

Chronically Ill, Traumatically Billed: $123,019 For 2 Multiple Sclerosis Treatments

November 27, 20181:41 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

JAY HANCOCK

Shereese Hickson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2012 and is unable to work. She supports herself and her son, Isaiah, on $770 a month.

Shereese Hickson’s multiple sclerosis was flaring again. Spasms in her legs and other symptoms were getting worse.

She could still walk and take care of her son six years after doctors diagnosed the disease, which attacks the central nervous system. Earlier symptoms such as slurred speech and vision problems had resolved with treatment, but others lingered: She was tired and sometimes fell.

This summer, a doctor switched her to Ocrevus, a drug approved in 2017 that delayed progression of the disease in clinical trials better than an older medicine did.

Genentech, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, makes Ocrevus. The drug is one of several for multiple sclerosis that are delivered intravenously in a hospital or clinic. Such medicines have become increasingly expensive, priced in many cases at well over $80,000 a year. Hospitals delivering the drugs often make money by charging a premium on top of their cost or adding hefty fees for the infusion clinic.

Hickson received her first two Ocrevus infusions as an outpatient two weeks apart in July and August. And then the bill came.

Keep reading.

This Wall Street Journal story about the cost vs price of knee replacements is getting a lot of comments (527 and counting) and letters to the editor, too. Here’s a PDF of the story if you don’t have your WSJ subscription handy.

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This morning MPR broadcast a story that reporters have been working on for eight months. Federal law requires state to pay for nearly all drugs. This is an interesting story on how it all works. You can read or click the arrow below.

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Here’s a link to the story on the NPR website.

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All 50 states and the District of Columbia were scored on more than 40 categories. The Commonwealth found 612 categories getting better, 259 getting worse in its 2018 report.

Here’s the online report across all states.

Here’s a PDF of the report.

Here are Minnesota-specific scores in a PDF.