I read an article years ago that bad oral hygiene could lead to a host of other diseases, including clogged arteries and heart disease. I didn’t really believe it then and I don’t really believe it now. Nonetheless, The New York Times had an article on why oral hygiene is crucial to your overall health.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Friday Links
- Antos: Against Medicare coverage for hearing aids.
- 58% of Payers Use Outcomes-Based Contracts for Prescription Drugs
- In the US, 85-90% of people who have sudden cardiac arrests do not survive. A home defibrillator cost $1,000. (NYT)
- Michael Milken: “We can now reasonably speculate about therapies that will give us the ability to clean tiny cancers from our bodies as routinely as dentists clean our teeth.”
- How Medicaid regulates drug prices.
Medicare Pilot Turns Hospice Care over to the Private Sector
Medicare’s experiment gives private insurers the flexibility to both expand eligibility and rein in costs. The same insurers already manage most other care for roughly 30 million Medicare beneficiaries through the program known as Medicare Advantage.
The hope is they can take that experience and those skills, like coordinating care and vetting the quality of providers, and apply them to improve hospice. Because private insurers get paid a lump sum to manage each Medicare patient, they are also motivated to keep costs down.
Should You Jumpstart Your Heart at Home?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you have probably seen television shows where doctors revived a patient whose heart had stopped. If you’re old enough, you probably even know people who have suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. My grandfather had one, but I know of numerous others. Something they all have in common is they’re all dead. About 85 to 90 percent of people who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest do not survive, because they don’t get help in time.