- Study: there are no economic rewards for expedited discovery of new Part B cancer drugs.
- In its 4.5-billion-year history, the Earth has experienced five mass extinction waves when more than 75 percent of the species on the planet were snuffed out. A nuclear winter could be the 6th.
- Tyler Cowen: the greatest danger to civilization is war, rather than intelligent robots.
- Walensky on the CDC on Covid: “our performance did not reliably meet expectations.” That’s it?
- Yglesias on leftist values. Recommended.
- Can this be true? “Big pharma is betting on psychedelics for mental health.”
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Where the Covid Relief Dollars Went
In the midst of the pandemic, the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”
The federal government provided about $5 trillion in relief money in three separate legislative packages. The result: “one of the largest frauds in American history.”
Wednesday Links
- Socialized medicine by stealth: Medicaid rolls during the pandemic have swelled by 24 million—a 34% increase—while two million more adults have enrolled in ObamaCare exchange plans.
- Were Democrats being “racist” when they left 2.2 million (disproportionately Black) poor people without health insurance while giving subsidies to high-income (disproportionately white) people. This is consistent with the history of social insurance.
- Covid Vaccine backlash: “10 percent of those vaccinated said they wish they hadn’t done so, while 15 percent of adults said they have been diagnosed with a new condition by a medical practitioner weeks or months after the first dose.”
- Study: Mandatory paid sick leave reduces ER visits. If so, employers and employees should be able to voluntarily adopt it until the marginal benefit equals the marginal cost. Duh!
Finally: FDA to Allow OTC Hearing Aids without a Prescription
On Tuesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally cleared the way for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. Yes, this is a “no-brainer”, and the most obvious question is: why did it take so long? The law allowing the FDA to approve OTC hearing aids was passed in five years ago, in August 2017.
Under the new rule, people with mild to moderate hearing loss should be able to buy hearing aids online and in retail stores as soon as October, without being required to see a doctor for an exam to get a prescription.