- Silicon Valley elite are spending up to $50,000 on genetic tests that claim to predict IQ alongside disease risks in their offspring.
- Over the past ten years, biosimilars have saved the U.S. health care system north of $56 billion, with the potential to save an additional $181 billion in the next five years.
- Study: existing AI platforms could deliver up to $360 billion in annual cost reductions without harming the quality of care delivered to patients.
- An argument: AI will kill us all.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
KFF: Why is Having a Baby So Expensive in the United States?
A mother who recently gave birth to premature quadruplets experienced a $4 million hospital bill. That was $1 million per child. Her babies required neonatal ICU for lengths of stay that varied from two months to nearly five months. The mother even quit her job in the sixth month of her pregnancy to qualify for Medicaid because she knew she could not afford the medical bills associated with quadruplets.
Wednesday Links
- Trump is cracking down on drug ads.
- New Census data puts the lie to America as “systemically racist.”
- About one third of the world’s population cannot afford a healthy diet.
- Can vitamin supplements extend people’s lives? No.
- A recent study of 194 countries found that 106 nations had policies requiring vaccination for at least one disease.
An AI Doctor Will See You Now… (right on your computer screen)
A while back my wife saw her doctor for an ongoing health concern. Years later we still wonder why an obvious diagnosis was missed and what could have been done to avoid unnecessary care. Why do I say the diagnosis was obvious? I recently entered a one-sentence description of the problem into Google, and it told me the exact cause and listed a variety of websites discussing treatments.