- Gorman and Goodman: Texas was right not to expand Medicaid.
- Schaeffer Center: Medicare Advantage enrolls lower-spending people, leading to large overpayments.
- Why DC is so dangerous: “the overwhelming preponderance of lethal violence is carried out with illegal weapons” and “most gun arrests don’t lead to charges.”
- Prenatal tests: Very accurate for common genetic disorders like Down syndrome. But for rare diseases, the positive results were wrong 80 percent to 93 percent of the time
- Janitor cut the power to a lab freezer, destroying decades’ worth of research materials valued at nearly $1 million.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Study: Physician-Owed Hospitals Have Lower Prices, Boosts Competition
The Affordable Care Act, a misnomer if there ever was one, has been the law of the land for 13 years now. One of the many ill-thought-out provisions was one that banned further development of hospitals owned by physicians.
“The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposed severe restrictions on physician-owned hospitals, such as prohibiting the development of new physician-owned hospitals and the expansion of existing ones,” Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University and one of the coauthors of the study, said.
Monday Links
- New diabetic wonder drugs come from two ugly predators: Angler fish and Gila monsters. (NYT)
- Tyler Cowen on the lab leak. (Should we hope it’s true?)
- Casey Mulligan on the household burden of green policies: a poor household pays almost 9% of its income to pay for green policies whereas the rich pay 1.5%.
- Dr. Marty Makary: Ten reasons why we know Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab.
- AMA: BMI standards are racist.
Saturday Links
- Milliman: the average family of four with employer-sponsored health insurance will pay—directly and indirectly—$31,065 in health costs in 2023.
- Alzheimer’s drugs: “the ability to slow cognitive decline by a small but significant margin may not translate into a noticeable day-to-day difference for patients … at a price of $26,500 annually.”
- American Compass founder Oren Cass on living standards decline: “Whereas 40 weeks of the typical male worker’s income in 1985 could provide the middle-class essentials for a family of four, by 2022 he needed 62 weeks of income—a problem, there being only 52 weeks in a year.”
- AEI response: “While Cass’ estimates imply that cost-adjusted earnings have fallen by 36 percent, when we apply conventional inflation adjustment to median weekly earnings and look at all full-time workers, we find an increase of 33 percent before taxes and 53 percent after taxes.”
- Is the exercise equipment industry one big scam?
- Scott Sumners: the Covid lab leak theory has not been confirmed.