- California is the first state to join the WHO, after US exit.
- Why the US left the WHO.
- Study: people who eat five or more daily servings of ultra processed foods have an 82% higher risk of developing Crohn’s disease.
- Study: electronic health record issues were a potential contributor to diagnostic errors in about 61 percent of malpractice cases.
- Study: Places that produce more health care spending per capita among the elderly do not produce higher life expectancy. On the margin, there is little or no “health return” to higher medical spending.
- Fraud against government health-care programs is both common and costly.
- Congressional Democrats defend health insurance companies.
- Popcorn is actually a healthy diet choice; so is coffee and a moderate amount of salt.
- Avalere: MFN drug pricing will have no effect on 99% of Medicare beneficiaries.
- Value-based care has increased (rather than decreased) spending for the 11 million enrollees in Medicare ACO programs
Category: Cost of Healthcare
More Hospital Systems Establish Medicare Advantage Plans
Large hospital systems often complain about Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. Just last year some large hospital systems reported dropping or threatened to drop major MA plans run by health insurers. One complaint is low reimbursement, but arguably a more irritating business practices by MA plans is excessive prior authorization and slow payments. Breaking up with an MA plan runs the risk of shutting out thousands of potential patients. A strategy more large hospital systems are exploring is establishing their own MA plans.
Monday Links – 26 January 2026
- Insurers blame hospitals and drugs companies for rising health care costs.
- Why lower prices do not necessarily lower health care spending.
- Obamacare penalizes marriage. Thanks to Devon Herrick for the pointer.
- The federal government’s increasing share of spending has grown from 32 percent to nearly 50 percent today.
- “French supertax on wealthy raises only a quarter of planned revenue,”
- 2025 was far and away the worst year for measles cases in the 21st century.
- Deporting workers lowers our GDP.
- Three bills offer Health Savings Account solutions for the Obamacare impasse in Congress.
Thune comes under GOP pressure to bypass Democrats on health care
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is coming under increasing pressure from Senate Republican colleagues to bring health care legislation to the Senate floor amid fears of a Democratic wave in November. Conservatives are pushing the GOP to move a package similar to President Trump’s new health care reform proposal through the budget reconciliation process, which would allow it to avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass the Senate with a simple majority.