- Sen Ron Wyden: Health insurers are running so-called ghost networks, in which providers are listed in networks but don’t actually offer care. Why is he surprised?
- New CMS rule would make it easier for ineligible people to continue receiving benefits and reduce safeguards to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.
- Nonprofit hospital chain sucks out profits, while leaving a poor, minority community without essential services.
- Study: More than 80% of people sampled in Greece report witnessing informal (off the books) payments for health care and the number is also high elsewhere in Europe. (Health Affairs, gated) Unfortunately the authors call rationing by price “corruption,” whereas rationing by waiting is apparently a civic duty.
Category: John C. Goodman
340B Explained
This is priceless:
Thanks to 340B, Richmond Community Hospital can buy a vial of Keytruda, a cancer drug, at the discounted price of $3,444… But the hospital charges the private insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield more than seven times that price — $25,425, according to a price list that hospitals are required to publish. That is nearly $22,000 profit on a single vial.
Monday Links
- How are state universities just like hospitals? Unflattering.
- More empirical evidence of their similarity. Also unflattering. (NYT, gated)
- Fraudsters may have stolen $45.6 billion from the nation’s unemployment insurance program during the pandemic.
- The official child poverty rate is 15.3%; but if you count all the transfers programs, the actual poverty rate is about 2%. (WSJ, gated)
- Sitting all day can erase the benefits of a workout.
Friday Links
Steve Forbes: We are already in a recession.
Dilbert cancelled by 77 newspapers for making fun of “wokeness”.
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. How big a problem is that?