Patients love free samples. However, there really is nothing truly free in our health care system. That free drug sample is an expensive branded medication when it comes time to refill your prescription. Generic drugs are not available as free samples. Only branded drugs that drugmakers are trying to promote are.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Tuesday Links
- Some 37 million Americans have chronic kidney disease and as many as 90% are undiagnosed. So why is the Biden administration opposing at-home kidney tests for early detection? (WSJ)
- California’s new $25 an hour minimum wage (even for janitors) will cost the state $4 billion more a year in higher Medicaid costs – this in a state that is already deeply in debt. (WSJ)
- Anger is bad for your health: it can trigger heart attacks.
- Cancer causes financial hardship – even for those with health insurance.
- The British NHS tries to cover up scandal: 30,000 people infected from contaminated blood treatments.
- A non-government solution: Companies are providing their own child care centers.
Monday Links
- Epidemiologists estimate that Plasmodium, the parasite transmitted through the female mosquito vector, has claimed the lives of 5 percent of the humans who’ve ever existed. Even today, it kills someone under the age of five every two minutes.
- Scott Sumner: industrial policy has never worked.
- Myth exposed: Mama Cass didn’t die by choking on a ham sandwich.
- Henderson: Economists are less selfish than the average person.
- In 2023, food stamp benefits did not cover the cost of a meal in 99 percent of counties.
- Intermittent fasting works for me. But a NEJM study says it is no better than counting calories.
Saturday Links
- Teens who use cannabis face 11 times the odds for a psychotic episode compared to teens who abstain from the drug, new Canadian research contends.
- The fertility rates in some countries (e.g., South Korea). Are below 1.0. That is less that one birth for every two adults.
- Why the unwinding of the (Covid-related) expansion of Medicaid didn’t cause an increase in uninsurance: Nearly half of the 5.9 million people who were projected to become uninsured … already thought they were uninsured.” in a 2022 survey.
- Homelessness is bad for your health.
- Whether worker pay has kept up with productivity depends on how you measure “worker pay” and how you measure “productivity.” Is this a joke?
- GPT4 passes the restaurant review Turing test. Observers can’t tell whether the reviewer was human or not.
- How CMS wants to regulate your access to drugs.