- How anti-obesity drugs could make us wealthier: “An average female obese woman earns around 10 percent less than a normal-weight woman in the States. Just taking that, imagine we cut obesity levels in the US to Scandinavian levels going from 40 percent of the population to 20 percent of the population. Assuming that that then increases salaries for those who will get out of obesity by 10 percent. That translates more or less into a two percent increase in US GDP.”
- Can AI run Medicaid?
- To save Social Security: Instead of more taxes for the rich, cut their benefit payments.
- Key to a happy life: marriage matters more than career. This is the opposite of what most young people think. (NYT)
- Why is Medicare charging researchers large fees to access its data?
- Are clubhouses the solution to serious mental illness?
Author: John C. Goodman
Friday Links
- Coming to the market soon: noninvasive, AI-powered brain decoders that can translate into text the unspoken thoughts swirling through our minds.
- Another argument that FDA approval for new drugs should depend on safety alone, not efficacy.
- The US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a 10-year backlog of claims.
- “…the student loan program, as currently written, is looking to be one of the most costly, inefficient and unwise government programs of the 21st century.”
- More than half of all rural hospitals no longer deliver babies.
Thursday Links
- The first human implanted with a chip from Elon Musk’s computer-brain interface company can move a computer mouse with thought alone.
- A completely false headline: Banning surprise medical bills is raising costs elsewhere. (STAT: gated) It’s saving patients money and causing insurers to pay a bit more. What else would you expect????
- Shkreli Awards (for 2023) have arrived. My favorite: the CEO of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital chain gets a salary of $35 million.
- More evidence in favor of the Mediterranean diet.
- Families USA (which traditionally has advocated socialism in health care) has a quasi-capitalist plan for health care reform.
- After all these years, Matthew Holt still can’t figure out how to reduce health care costs. (Hint: look at how costs are reduced in every other market.)
Obamacare’s Three Key Failings
- Obamacare worsened the quality of individual market health insurance and caused millions of people to replace better coverage with worse coverage. Obamacare substantially raised premiums and deductibles and most plans exclude top hospitals and doctors.
- The rising costs from Obamacare led more small businesses to drop health insurance.
- The law’s coverage expansion now costs taxpayers more than $200 billion a year — almost all of which are subsidies to health insurers — without improving health outcomes.
Source: Brian Blase