Think back a little over four years ago in the late Spring of 2020. Covid was taking off and nobody really knew how to stop it. Everyone was advised to stay home and when you had to venture out you were required to wear a mask. Masks were hard to find. Latex gloves were hard to find. Hand sanitizer was difficult to find and toilet paper was too. A major problem during Covid was not just that demand had skyrocketed for protective gear (called PPE) but also protective gear was mostly made overseas in China. Global transportation ground to a halt making it hard to access PPE from abroad even if there was the capacity abroad to manufacture it.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Monday Links
- Biden reverses course – reinstates Trump policies he initially cancelled.
- Why can’t you have a televisit with a doctor in another state?
- Cato is having an online forum on telehealth.
- “The program’s stated goal is to “raise the nutrition levels of low-income households,” yet 40 percent of adult SNAP (food stamp) recipients suffer from obesity and almost 45 percent have received a diagnosis of diet-related disease — far higher rates than the general population.”
- AEI against the House-passed tax bill: “A parent of multiple children with $20,000 of annual income would face an effective tax rate of 83 percent if they took a full-time job paying $40,000 per year.” But that’s because of the other means tested welfare benefits.
Friday Links
- The term “neoliberalism” was coined by Nazi intellectuals as a term of derision. However, I don’t think the term is a bad one to describe modern classical liberals.
- Next big legal issue: would a reasonable physician have followed (or departed from) a guideline generated by ChatGPT or Genesis…..
- Moderate income families get more than four times as much help from the government in the Obamacare exchanges as they get for the same insurance obtained at work.
- The latest oral tobacco craze is probably something you probably have never heard of: Zyn. Apparently. It is much healthier than cigarettes.
- Biden’s CMS targets red states (e.g., Florida Texas and Missouri) with burdensome new rules, while ignoring blue states (e.g., California).
Thursday Links
- First human receives a computer chip implant that interfaces with the brain. (per Elon Musk)
- Canadian Health Minister: Canada will block drug sales to the US if they threaten to impair access for Canadians.
- How can childcare cost more than college?
- Sex matters: “female patients randomly assigned a female doctor rather than a male doctor [under Texas workers compensation] are 5.2 percent more likely to be evaluated as disabled and receive 8.6 percent more subsequent cash benefits on average.”
- If you are ever reincarnated, don’t come back as a crab-eating macaque. They are used for toxicology testing in the biomedical industry.