You would think with Covid driving so many people to the emergency rooms, hospitals would be in great financial shape. Yet in 2022 hospitals experienced the worst financial performance in memory. Jeff Goldsmith writes:
Category: COVID-19 and Public Health
Friday Links
- What Jimmy Carter got right: deregulation that saved consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.
- More than $200 Million in New York City-Purchased COVID Gear Auctioned Off For Just $500,000. Thousands of ventilators de Blasio commissioned for $12 million sell as scrap metal for less than $25K.
- The White House favors an “AI Bill of Rights.” Rights for the robot? No. Rights for people who want to opt out of interacting with the robot.
- Study: Vaccine mandates did nothing to stop Covid spread.
- Health Affairs: Abortions are “health care.”
Thursday Links
- Transparency: Hospitals still don’t want you to know how much you are going to have to pay. CMS has issued nearly 500 warning notices and over 230 requests for corrective action. The penalty for non-compliance in 2022 is up to $5,500 per day (more than $2 million a year).
- Hospitals still don’t want you to know what you are going to be charged: Nearly 500 get a warning from CMS.
- Study: 57 percent of nurses felt “exhausted” over the past two weeks, 43 percent felt “burned out,” and just 20 percent said they felt valued.
- Light pollution: one-third of the people in the world can’t see the Milky Way. (NYT)
- Not following the science. The most rigorous and comprehensive study to date: masks don’t work. CDC tells schools to require them anyway.
Wednesday Links
- Covid lockdown measures worldwide reduced the seismic noise of the planet by up to 50 percent.
- Canadian study: for roughly half the population, drinking coffee increases the risk of kidney dysfunction.
- The federal government is now required to engage in explicitly racist hiring.
- David Henderson: The “1619 Project” on Hula vindicates Capitalism (WSJ)
- The generic drug market isn’t as competitive as we thought.
- Digital health: The share of U.S. adults who said they use health applications has grown 6 percentage points to 40% since December 2018, while the share of adults who said they use wearables has grown by 8 points to 35%.