- Moffett: Britain’s new prime minister refuses to say whether he relies on private care or the National Health Service.
- Badger: The way the No Surprise (for doctor billings) Act is panning out is not what we signed on for.
- Moffett and Badger: what the government did wrong in response to the Covid pandemic; what it should have done.
- Moffett: Why can’t Dr. Fauci and the CDC get their stories straight on whether masking is effective?
Author: John C. Goodman
Thursday Links
- Video: A Canadian describes what socialized medicine is like in Canada. Get ready to hit your pause button to appreciate the examples.
- If you used GoodRx to find bargains on your medications, it sent your sensitive health data to tech companies like Meta and Google to use for advertising, according to the FTC.
- Researchers from Johns Hopkins found that 54 percent of people believe landlords should be allowed to deny housing to people with drug addiction and 64 percent believe employers should be allowed to deny them employment. But if addiction is defined as a “disability,” none of this would be legal.
- What a Democrat aligned advocacy group wants from Congress on health care: Continue Obamacare subsidies for the rich; extend Medicare drug price controls to everyone else; hearing, dental and eye care benefits for Medicare enrollees – regardless of income and despite the fact that those benefits are available for free from Medicare Advantage plans.
Wednesday Links
- The human circulatory system is 60,000 miles long.
- While waiting for government price negotiations to begin, Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. have raised prices on nearly 1,000 products so far this year.
- Matt Holt discovers that he pays more for drugs than his insurer does – just like Medicare enrollees. Too bad he didn’t do more to help stop the congressional Democrats from rescinding the Trump executive order that would have ended this practice—at least for Medicare.
- Are politicians playing doctor on marijuana, or are they just getting big brother out of the way?
- JAMA: AI can’t be included as a coauthor on published articles.
Wednesday Links
- Blue Cross say its reforms would save $767B over 10 years. Chief among them: pay the same price for medical care, regardless of where it is delivered. That means a facility can’t bill a higher rate to Medicare, just because it has a link to a hospital.
- To save a child from a rare disease, a one-time injection costs $1.7 million. (NYT) I don’t have a problem with the cost. But who is going to pay for it?
- Should doctors bill for answering patients’ emails? (NYT) I say, yes. Other professionals bill by time. Why should doctors do the same?
- Ten myths About nutrition. Myth No 1: fresh is better than frozen, canned or dried fruits and vegetables. (NYT)
- 3 problems with Covid boosters: (1) the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated; (2) vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines; (3) antibodies rapidly wane after a few months. (WSJ)