The NIH is spending $189 million on a landmark study to precisely determine what you and I should eat. The study involves 10,000 volunteers, who will spend weeks and months recording their diets. According to the Wall Street Journal, 500 study participants will live in scientific facilities where they can be intensely monitored. The 500 will be tethered to blood glucose monitors and other measures to determine how each diet affects them.
Author: Devon Herrick
Medicare Fraud is too Easy (and Widespread)
Late last summer Pamela Ludwig, owner of a Franklin, Tennessee firm that goes by the name Pretty in Pink Boutique, began receiving calls from angry Medicare enrollees across the country. The seniors were mad that their Medicare accounts had been charged for urinary catheters they did not need, nor had received. About the same time 1,300 miles away in El Paso, Texas Erika Tavarez too began receiving angry emails and then a visit from the FBI. She had recently sold a durable medical equipment business, also called Pretty in Pink, that provided prothesis for breast cancer survivors.
Does Society Hate Old People?
Kaiser Health News (now called KHN) published an article titled, “Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?” The inflammatory headline was about the high death toll of older adults from covid, saying:
The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.
Should Outcomes Research Discount Quality of Life when Computing Value?
To gauge the relative value of any health intervention the outcome needs to be measured and compared to some desired result. Cost effectiveness analysis is a tool used to compare the cost of outcomes from various interventions. For instance, preventive medical services are compared to other lifesaving interventions using the outcome life years saved. This allows public health advocates to decide how to allocate scare resources.