- Geriatric loneliness: are robots the answer?
- “The hundreds of fine hairs that cover an elephant’s trunk are some of the most sophisticated and sensitive whiskers in the animal kingdom.”
- Miracle drug for prostate cancer has a problem: It might have prevented an American athlete from making the Olympic team. (NYT)
- All of the job gains last year were in health care. The rest of the economy lost jobs.
- Someone with average lifetime earnings of $50,000 can expect to receive about four dollars in Medicare benefits for every dollar of Medicare payroll taxes paid.
Category: Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare
NYT: What is Physicians’ Role in an AI Empowered Health Care System?
AI is causing some doctors to rethink what it means to be a physician. What is their purpose in the age of chatbots that can spit out accurate answers to medical questions 24 hours a day and do not take vacations. Will AI boost the productivity of doctors the way tractors boost the productivity of farmers? Or will it put skilled knowledge workers out of a job like the assembly line did to cobblers and tailors?
Wednesday Links – 11 February 2026
- Food stamp fraud.
- “In what some experts deem one of the largest examples of Medicare waste in history, Medicare spending on wound care products known as “skin substitutes” skyrocketed from $256 million in 2019 to over $10 billion in 2024.”
- The city enjoying a Super Bowl parade:
- More than 35% of office and retail space downtown sits vacant, with even some prime waterfront properties sitting empty.
- The region lost 12,900 jobs last year, the first annual decline since the recession of 2009.
- It also has the highest inflation rate of any major metro region in the country with consumer prices soaring 29% from 2021 through 2025.
The quarterback for the Seahawks, Sam Darnold, faces a California tax bill exceeding $200,000, which more than cancels out the $188,000 payment he (and every other member of the Seahawks) will receive from the NFL for being the winner.
Wednesday Links – 4 February 2026
- Issue causing a sharp divide among Catholics: how to take communion.
- “Thomas joins a growing number of people who say their casual A.I. use turned excessive and addictive, and led them to a state of psychosis that almost cost them their lives.”
- 53 percent of traditional Medicare beneficiaries receive care through an accountable care organization.
- Hard to believe: Democrats are objecting to TrumpRx.
- Male birth control is on the horizon. (Statnews)
- More than one-quarter of physicians enrolled In Medicaid delivered no care to beneficiaries.
- KFF poll: other than cost, authorizations rank as public’s biggest burden when getting health care.