There may be other reasons to avoid CT scans of dubious merit. A new theoretical analysis claims CT scans may cause up to 103,000 cancers each year.
Saturday Links
- Medicare Advantage and Traditional Medicare enrollees get about the same amount of dental, hearing, and vision care. MA patients pay less out of pocket.
- in 2019, mean monthly out-of-pocket costs were estimated to be $440 in Medicare Advantage compared with $579 in fee-for-service Medicare. (That’s $1,668 a year difference.)
- Ippolito on the prospects for Medicare Advantage reform.
- Social cost of measles outbreak in Texas: $35.4 million. Social cost of vaccines that could have prevented measles: $40,000–$115,000.
- Real, inflation-adjusted, federal domestic spending per person is now more than 2.5 times what it was in 1980, while total government spending and tax subsidies at all levels exceed $90,000 per household.
- Why hospital price transparency regulations aren’t working: “Many hospitals can easily afford the small fine and keep breaking the law.”
KFF: Preventive Care is not Always Free
The U.S. health care system has a cost problem. There is little in the way of competition because third parties pay about 89% of medical bills, while patients pay the remaining 11%. Long before patients enter their doctor’s office, third parties have decided which tasks they will pay for and how much they will pay. Federal and state laws mandate certain benefits that health plans must pay, but the rules are subject to interpretation.
Friday Links
- In 2020, the 10 percent tax bracket applied to incomes up to $9,875 for individuals and $19,750 for couples. Now, those thresholds have increased to $11,925 and $23,850 to account for inflation. But what if our inflation measure is wrong?
- AI scribes are helping doctors up code. (Statnews)
- In the first six months of the Trump administration, deregulation saved $86 billion in costs and 52.2 million hours of paperwork reductions.
- A plurality of Blacks and Native Americans live.in distressed ZIP codes with these characteristics:
More than one in five residents lives in poverty. The median local household earns nearly $30,000 less annually than the median household nationally. One in seven homes is vacant or abandoned, one-third of prime age adults are not working, jobs are disappearing, and businesses are closing even as the national economy booms.