The physician shortage could reach 86,000 doctors by 2036, of which nearly half of the missing doctors could reflect shortages in primary care. One reason is demographics. The average age of physicians is 47 for women and 55 for men. Many of the older practicing physicians are among the Baby Boomer generation, who will be retiring soon and need care for themselves as they grow old. Another reason for the shortage is a 1996 federal law capping the number of graduate medical education training slots that Medicare will fund.
Wednesday Links
- Loneliness is unhealthy. (NYT) It is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, other types of dementia and even Parkinson’s disease.
- Are doctors withdrawing life support too soon?
- Why you may not get the best cancer care.
- Biden claims billionaires pay an average federal income tax rate of 8.5% “in almost every speech.” The Washington Post awards that claim two Pinocchio’s.
- Are females better doctors?
- The percentage of doctors imported from abroad has skyrocketed from 9 percent in 1981 to 25 percent in 2024.
There Is An Emerging Black Market in Healthy Poop for Medicinal Use
We have all probably watched a television show or movie where a clandestine drug deal occurs. In movies a nervous buyer often meets a nervous seller in a seedy part of town. Money and products are exchanged with both hoping the other is not a cop. Either party could try to steal what the other has without keeping their end of the bargain. This is probably mostly fiction, but clandestine exchanges of drugs do occur. Buying and selling illicit drugs is a dirty business, but Slate magazine describes new levels of filth: selling human poop for medicinal use.
Tuesday Links
- Danish anti-pot study: Up to 30% of young men’s schizophrenia diagnoses could have been prevented had they not become dependent on marijuana. HT: Grace-Marie Turner
- David Henderson on Ryan A. Bourne, The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Value, and Prices Create Bad Policy,
- Author discusses the pluses and minuses of Ozempic.
- HHS suspends funding for group that financed gain of function research at Wuhan.
- How should we program self-driving cars? When the choice is between accidents that kill pedestrians vs. killing passengers, public opinion weighs in.