- Dr. Casey Means (the would-be Surgeon General): Doctors make people sicker. (NYT)
- A single submarine can require four tons of rare earths. (NYT)
- A brief history of Obamacare.
- The whole developed world is about to start shrinking. If not for immigration, it already would be.
- How much does AARP get for sponsoring UnitedHealth insurance? $9 billion.
- Cato study: Repealing certificate-of-need (CON) laws increased the number of long-term acute care hospitals (LTACs) by 69 percent and added an average of 558 certified beds per million elderly residents. Furthermore, when LTACs entered the nursing home market, they decreased the rate at which patients in skilled nursing facilities were rehospitalized by 5.9 percent, the number of patients who fell while in care by 5.3 percent, and the number of patients who were physically restrained to their beds by 13 percent.
Category: Authors
Why is Health Reform So Difficult?
Why can’t people agree on strategies to fix health care? It is due to many things, including disagreements on health economics, self-interest, and fundamental differences in ideology. Every public intellectual has an idea that may, or may not, do anything to improve health care.
Friday Links
- Wealth inequality has barely changed over the last 30 years if Social Security wealth is included.
- Private insurers are paying 78 percent more at hospital outpatient departments than they pay at ambulatory surgical centers. Medicare payments are 97 percent higher.
- Takaichi Sanae: She plays the drums and rides a motor cycle.
- With Covid-era subsidies, Obamacare is almost free.
- Gingrich and Jindal: Use the $50 billion for rural health care for prevention and primary care. rather than to extend the life of unsustainable facilities.
Thursday Links
- Study: Wegovy lowers the risk of heart attack, stroke or death from cardiovascular issues by 20 percent, independent of weight loss. (NYT)
- A centimeter of hair captures about a month’s worth of biological data, so doctors can test hair for drug use, poisonings, chronic stress and even medication adherence.
- Is the FDA creating new obstacles to the approval of promising new drugs? (WSJ)
- Physician “overcoding”: BCBS of Massachusetts suspects 1% to 2% of primary care physicians and 3% to 4% of specialists in its network.
- Bill Gates: Climate change is not an existential threat.