- “The energy stored in a human baby’s tissues accounts for only about 4 percent of the total energy costs of pregnancy. The other 96 percent is extra fuel required by a woman’s own body.” (NYT)
- The (leftwing) American Prospect complains that Medicare Advantage plans are spending $64 billion a year on such supplemental benefits as dental, vision, gym memberships, etc. – benefits that those in traditional Medicare enrollees don’t get. C’mon, guys. If traditional Medicare weren’t so inefficient, it could offer those benefits as well.
- How the Biden administration is negatively impacting Medicare.
- Do for-profit hospitals practice cream skimming (taking on healthier patients with lower costs of care)? No. it’s the nonprofits that are more guilty of this practice.
- Giving blood is an alternative to a payday loan.
Author: Pieter Vorster
Wednesday Links
- A proposal: for reference pricing – why aren’t insurance companies and employers doing this?
- Cato’s Human Freedom Index: Switzerland is No. 1. The US is No. 17
- 3 million children have been dropped from Medicaid and CHIP this year.
- Homelessness is surging in blue states and blue cities.
- Bernie Sanders to introduce bill to restrict US drug prices to the prices paid by other developed countries. (Some similarity to a Trump policy that Biden rescinded.) InsideHealthPolicy — Gated
Pay is One Reason for the Shortage of Primary Care Providers (there are other reasons too)
Kaiser Health News reports that compensation is key to fixing the primary care shortage. The article goes on to say that there are many reasons for the shortage of primary care physicians, but one is inescapable: compensation. Here is a profound quote from the KHN article:
Money talks.
Saturday Links
- How Obamacare denied one family’s daughter the cancer care she needed.
- Did a Fauci advisor intentionally delete or destroy records relating to the origins of COVID-19?
- Kings and Queens theory: as income goes up, fertility goes down.
- High-heat neighborhoods can be 5 to 20 degrees hotter than surrounding neighborhoods. And a lot of other facts I bet you don’t know,
- Trump’s “Opportunity Zones” (created by the 2017 tax reform bill) are producing disappointing results. Enterprise Zones were an idea imported from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain by Heritage Foundation scholar Stuart Butler. The original idea was to create mini-Hong Kongs in otherwise dilapidated areas. What happened was no deregulation, only tax cuts and subsidies. I predicted from day one that if all you do is offer tax cuts, the experiment will turn into a special interest scam and Hong Kong will never emerge from the rubble. It appears I was right.