- Half of all Medicare beneficiaries are now in Medicare Advantage plans.
- Gallup: 38% say they or a family member put off medical care because of costs – the highest number in 22 years.
- Cato: Black civil servants earned approximately 3.4 – 6.9 percentage points less because of the segregationist policies of Woodrow Wilson – the 20th century’s most prominent “progressive.”
- Mark Cuban’s online Cost Plus Drug Co. as 2 million customers. Cuban says the pharmacy could have saved his Dallas Mavericks basketball team $146,000. So why didn’t they?
Author: John C. Goodman
Wednesday Links
- Covid study: almost no form of pandemic preparedness helped to ameliorate or shorten the pandemic. Compared to other countries, the United States did not perform poorly because of cultural values such as individualism, collectivism, selfishness, or lack of trust.
- Are science and technology becoming less disruptive?
- MLK Day studies reviewed, including this finding: Slavery played no major role in the US economic growth.
- Is the decline of religion causing a rise in “deaths of despair”?
Tuesday Links
- America’s public hospitals are privatizing.
- The Economist: Now is a bad time to have a heart attack. Hospitals around the world are having trouble meeting the demand.
- Wokeness comes to medical schools: Instead of thinking, “How can my patients protect themselves against health problems?” the AAMC asks medical students to think, “What kind of public collective action is necessary to confront health inequity across identifiable populations?”
- US cancer death rate is down by a third.
- Having a friend is healthier than having a life partner; it’s even as important as diet and sleep. (WaPo)
- Lottery winner gets $1.35B prize. The bulk of the prize money comes from below-average-income ticker buyers, of course, even though this lottery was created by liberal lawmakers in a liberal state. All of the critics who routinely remind us of the evils of inequality are saying …. hum … not much of anything.
Monday Links
- Eight of the 25 major work stoppages involving 1,000 workers in 2022 were initiated by health care workers.
- Of the $586 billion spent on drugs in 2021, more than 30% ($179 billion) was captured by intermediaries such as PBMs.
- Chris Pope: America actually has five health care systems.
- An old essay that’s worth rereading: “How doctors Die.” HT: Richard Hanania.
- What its liked to be a nurse in the British NHS.
- Is there a religious (pre-Christian) argument for Canadian Euthanasia? (Ross Douthat in the NYT)