- In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Alliance for Connected care rebutted three myths:
- Telehealth Does Not Lead to Increased Fraud
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Drive Overutilization
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Increase Spending
- Older patients with diabetes do better if they have the means to pay for care (health insurance, higher income or higher wealth).
- For years contraceptives could only be sold by prescription. People can now buy oral contraceptives on Amazon.
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Does Society Hate Old People?
Kaiser Health News (now called KHN) published an article titled, “Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?” The inflammatory headline was about the high death toll of older adults from covid, saying:
The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.
Rural Hospitals are Suffering, as are Their Patients
The medical news website, Kaiser Health News ran an article about a rural hospital in Oklahoma suing its patients over unpaid bills. This is now an old, familiar story in health care. Hospitals, including nonprofit organizations, sometimes sue patients for delinquent medical debts. Obamacare was supposed to do away with medical debt but many people still have cost-sharing they cannot afford.
Friday Links
- Senators propose to remove barriers to telemental health services for Medicare beneficiaries.
- Bidenomics: The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021.
- Thanks to a Trump initiative, if wait times for veterans do not meet an “access standard” (e.g., 20 days for primary care and mental health care and 28 days for specialty care), they may seek private sources of care. However, private wait times may be longer than VA wait times.
- A flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) likely won’t cover wearable devices like an Apple Watch or Fitbit, but blood pressure monitors, blood sugar test kits, thermometers, hearing aids and Oura rings—which monitor biometrics primarily focused on sleep—are typically eligible.
- Alex Tabarrok on how much regulation is needed in medical care.