- People have a hard time worrying about more than one thing at a time. E.g., Covid worries tend to crowd out climate change worries.
- Do congressional committee members interrupt female witnesses more than male witnesses?
- Reasons to think Covid did not have an animal origin.
- Why haven’t we found a cure for Alzheimer’s?
- Can oxygen be a substitute for antibiotics?
- How The Woman King got history wrong and why that’s controversial.
- Tyler Cowen reviews new book on insurance by Amy Finkelstein, et. al.
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
Is Period Regulation Really a Health Issue?
Hormonal contraception created the ability for women to delay or go months without having their menstrual period. This was initially thought to be detrimental to women’s health but was later decided it made no difference and became a selling point for certain brands of contraceptives. Nowadays there is a different type of pill intended to regulate menstrual bleeding. However, in this case it’s designed to bring about the onset of menstruation rather than delay it and the drugs are the same pills used in chemical abortions.
Report: Hard to Measure How Much Community Benefits Hospitals Provide
It is not uncommon for doctors, hospitals, clinics and other medical professionals to claim they lose money on Medicare and especially Medicaid. Medicaid, the federal-state partnership for low-income Americans is an especially stingy payer for physician services. Medicaid fees vary from state to state and among physician specialties. However, that is a discussion for another day. Medicare is another story. For Instance, Medicare pays about three times the fees that Rhode Island Medicaid pays for primary care consults. Some other states’ Medicaid programs pay closer to what Medicare pays for the same services. This brings me to an article in Kaiser Health News.
The American Hospital Association contends that the federal government reimburses providers significantly less than it costs to care for Medicare recipients. Unlike private insurers, the federal government does not negotiate prices with hospitals. Medicare bases the amount it pays on hospitals’ locations, labor costs, and other factors.
Nearly 334,000 Medical Providers Quit in 2021
Public health experts have long predicted that the United States will increasingly suffer from a shortage of physicians. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the physician shortage could reach 120,000 medical providers by 2034. A new report finds that nearly 334,000 health care providers left the field in 2021. This includes doctors and nurse practitioners.
As a profession, physicians lost the most members, with 117,000 individuals leaving their roles last year, followed by nurse practitioners, which lost 53,295 members and physician assistants, with 22,704 positions vacated, according to a report published Thursday by Definitive Healthcare.