Aggressive marketing, outreach to law enforcement, outreach to emergency room doctors and hospital staff is a way to fill psych beds with referrals. Although inpatient psychiatric hospitals are sometimes needed in extreme cases, they are ripe for abuse.
George Halvorson’s Response to MedPac
The people enrolled in the Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plans are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare coverage and those millions of people have the highest health care needs in the country.
80% of the very lowest income Medicare enrollees are in MA plans.
MA plans have 40% fewer hospital admissions for congestive heart failure, and almost 80% lower amputation rates for the lowest income diabetic member.
Medicare Advantage costs 18% less than the average cost of fee-for-service Medicare at this point in time.
Source: The Heath Care Blog
Tuesday Links
- Oregon has ended the legalization of hard drugs. WaPo (Essentially anything besides marijuana.)
- No one wants to be a teacher anymore.
- Gender dysphoria in children is temporary – even among teens.
- New Labour Party scheme: NHS staff will turn up at a place of work unannounced and proceed to weigh any employees over the age of 40, check their blood pressure and measure their cholesterol. What about all the people waiting for care?
- What the censors got wrong about covid.
- The gender gap: “boys are behind girls throughout school, especially throughout K12 … the top 10% of students, measured by their GPA, break two-thirds female, one third male; and the bottom 10% … is the other way around.”
Monday Links
- Economic Freedom index: the US has dropped to number 25.
- CMS drug negotiations: The private sector – without government intervention – negotiated drug savings that were more than triple the amount negotiated by the Biden Administration. Also, CMS, in showing off the results of its negotiations, calculated the discounted figures from the list prices of the 10 drugs, and not the prices at which they’re typically sold, which include rebates and discounts.
- As a senator, Kamala Harris sponsored what may be the most expansive and expensive social welfare bill ever introduced in Congress.
- How birds know where to migrate: quantum mechanics.
- What if, in the second half of the 20th century, there had been no decolonization? Argument: people living in the colonies would today be better off.
- Galt’s Gulch really exists — off the coast of Honduras.