- To keep the doctor away, try 4,000 steps a day.
- Medicaid expansion states attracted more than twice as many able-bodied adults as predicted — leading to cost overruns topping $66 billion. (WSJ)
- A toe, foot or leg is cut off by a doctor about 150,000 times a year in America, making the United States a world leader of these amputations.
- Your prospects are better if your surgeon is female.
- Scientists recreated a Pink Floyd song by reading the brain signals of listeners.
- As many as two-thirds of US physicians experience burnout and this decreases the quality of care and increases the average health care costs.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Why It’s So Hard to Find a Primary Care Physician
Years ago I had a great primary care physician. One day I drove to his office and saw him assisting an elderly man walk to his car. Dr. Ingram could have asked his nurse to assist the patient. He could even have ignored the frail patient’s unsteady gait and let him fend for himself. Yet, Dr. Ingram personally helped his elderly patient make it to his car. That impressed me immensely. Not only did he treat the man’s health complaint, he made sure his patient got safely out of the office and on his way home. Nobody paid him for that, he did it out of his desire to help people.
Friday Links
- Sen. Cassidy white paper: a one-size-fits all approach for regulating AI will not work and will stifle innovation.
- Cato paper: Remove barriers to primary care practitioners prescribing methadone.
- AMA criticizes the FDA for not banning menthol cigarettes more rapidly. Hard to understand this. If menthol is not harmful and it’s only vice is that of appealing more to Black youth than White youth, isn’t banning it rank discrimination?
- Study: Biden boosted food stamps by 27%, without regard to income, and that caused 2.4 million Americans to leave work.
- Britain has a minister for loneliness. (NYT)
- Fewer than one in five nursing home residents with Covid received antiviral treatment during the pandemic. (JAMA)
Thursday Links
- Research bias: Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women.
- AI can even reportedly “taste wine” with 95% accuracy.
- There is “no money to be made in finding ways to reduce costs in health care.” Peter Coy reviews Why Not Better and Cheaper?: Healthcare and Innovation.
- Judge rules Louisiana cops can be sued for raiding the home of a man who joked about pandemic on Facebook.
- Physician quality regulation: There are more than 2,200 metrics and we have spent more than over $1.3 billion measuring them.