Health care sharing ministries have been around for years, and they fill a niche in a diverse insurance market shattered by Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has provisions that allow sharing ministries to coexist with Obamacare plans, which makes many consumers happy, but irritates some Obamacare advocates. It’s been a year since I last wrote…
Thursday Links
- US plans to rejoin UNESCO. Trump pulled us out because the organization is flagrantly anti-capitalist and anti-US. Biden is not only rejoining; he has agreed to $619 million in “arrears” payments.
- More than 90% of cancer centers are impacted by drug shortages.
- Cato paper on new technologies: Should we try to avoid harmful effects by regulation or by tort law?
- Is woke culture the reason Hollywood can’t make good movies any more – unless it recycles old plots and themes?
- Two different views of AI:
The New York Times: “Generative A.I. Can Add $4.4 Trillion in Value to Global Economy, Study Says,”
Bloomberg: “Biggest Losers of AI Boom Are Knowledge Workers, McKinsey Says.”
Some Medicare Hospice Care Firms Are Better than Others
We have written about Medicare hospice care several times in the past. John Goodman wrote about a new Medicare pilot program where the same health plans that manage seniors’ medical care will also manage their hospice benefits near end-of-life. I wrote about how Medicare hospice care is growing by leaps and bounds, which is attracting scammers who enroll ineligible patients (not likely to die in six months) and gouge taxpayers for care that is inappropriate.
The New York Times published an article on the difference in hospice care provided by nonprofit versus for-profit organizations. Purportedly, nonprofit organizations are a better value.
Wednesday Links
- Deaths in local jails due to drug or alcohol intoxication in 2019 was the highest recorded in 20 years. Drugs? Alcohol? In jail?
- Yglesias completely loses it over Donald Trump. And he’s not alone.
- The downside of prior authorization: A survey of more than 1,000 physicians found that 93% reported care delays and more than 50% said prior authorizations led to treatment abandonment because of patient hardships navigating the prior authorization process
- Quote of the week: DeSantis on Larry Fink:
“Who do these people think they are that they govern our society? Nobody voted for him. And so, our mantra in Florida is no economic or social transformation without representation. These are policies that could not win at the ballot box, and so they’re trying to do through corporate America what they can’t do in the electoral process.”