Many people assume that hospitals are dinosaurs, with little knowledge of competition. They often assume what we need is a real competitor to enter the health care business. While both arguments are true it’s far more complicated than that. Hospitals do compete with each other, just not in ways that are beneficial to their customers.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Monday Links
- Physician-administered specialty drugs comprise 55% of U.S. drug spending and over half of that spending is on oncology. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index included these drugs it would be 22% higher.
- One union saved $33 million a year on its health plan, generating funds to give its nearly 200,000 members $3,000 bonuses and their largest pay raise in history –primarily by carving out of its plan one major price-gouging hospital.
- To determine whether a person is eligible for Social Security disability, the government uses a depression era list of 10,000 occupations that was only partially updated 30 years ago.
- Why do you remember some things and not others?
- Why drinking alcohol on airplanes may be bad for you. (NYT)
Where Biden Went Wrong
This is Scott Sumner quoting (pro-Biden commentator) Matt Yglesias:
I would not expect any Democratic administration to weaken Davis-Bacon rules as an anti-inflationary measure, even though doing so would advance a number of Biden’s stated policy objectives.
The latest Jobs Report
Nearly three-quarters of the net new jobs in June were in government, healthcare and social assistance. These industries also made up roughly half of the new jobs in May and more than 90% in April….
Source: WSJ Editorial Board