More health care dollars are spent in hospitals than any other health care sector. Nearly one-third (31%) of the $4.255 trillion in health care expenditures are spent on hospital care. Physician care is 14.9%, while drugs are 8.9%. Thirty years ago, presidential candidate Ross Perot described a “giant sucking sound” due to jobs being sucked abroad by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Nowadays the giant sucking sound is the sound of workers’ and taxpayers’ income being sucked into hospitals due to price gouging and high hospital prices.
Author: Devon Herrick
Are Weight-Loss Drugs Right for Medicare?
Should Medicare cover weight-loss drugs under Part D plans? Currently Medicare drug plans do not cover drugs for weight-loss.
Medicare coverage of obesity services and treatments currently includes obesity screening, behavioral counseling, and bariatric surgery, but not drugs that are prescribed for weight loss. The 2003 law that established the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit explicitly prohibits Part D plans from covering drugs used for weight loss, along with some other types of drugs, including agents used for cosmetic purposes or hair growth, fertility drugs, and drugs prescribed to treat sexual or erectile dysfunction.
Dollar General to Open Retail Clinics
Progressives and people on the left often criticize dollar stores as contributing to so-called food deserts. Food deserts are parts of towns and rural areas where no large grocery stores want to operate. In addition, the presence of a dollar store supposedly makes an area less desirable for full-service grocers. The logic makes little sense to me: Dollar stores are supposedly bad because they’re not full-service grocers. Yet, full-service grocers don’t want to operate in food deserts because stores in the area are unprofitable but competition from dollar stores makes them even less profitable. What?
AMA: Don’t Let Pharmacists Initiate Care for Covid Patients
Have you called your primary care provider lately asking for an appointment? If so it was probably farther away than you had hoped. The national average wait to see a physician is 26 days. Once you see your doctor he or she is probably cordial but somewhat hurried. The average doctor-patient encounter lasts from 10 to 15 minutes, but that figure is probably skewed by Medicare patients who require longer appointments than average. There is a significant shortage of physicians.