- Deregulation lets pharmacist treat opioid overdoses without a doctor’s approval. The results are good.
- Why the AMA is wrong about pre-authorizations.
- Only 21.1% of hospital websites fully comply with a 2021 regulation that requires hospitals to post their prices.
- What’s wrong with PBMs: In Oklahoma, Caremark overcharged the state employee health plan by over $120,000 annually for a cancer drug; and in Illinois, a cancer patient paid hundreds more for her medication due to Caremark’s insistence on a higher-priced version. Express Scripts charged a New Jersey retiree $211 for a drug he could have bought for $22 at Costco.
- The Joint Economic Committee estimates obesity will cause upward of $8.2 trillion in “excess medical expenditures” in the next 10 years.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Wednesday Links
- Don Berwick and fellow travelers: “The Affordable Care Act was a major step forward in expanding access to health care in the US.”
- The reality: We are not getting any additional health care. One study found that there has been a small uptick in doctor visits by those at the bottom of the income ladder, offset by insignificant changes for the rest of the population. Doctor visits per capita for the country as a whole have actually gone down, and visits to the emergency room haven’t changed.
- How the act of “reporting” changed radically in response to Donald Trump.
- Why online betting soared after a Supreme Court ruling and why that matters for public health.
- What happens if Republicans don’t pass a tax bill.
WSJ: Patients Losing Trust in their Doctors
The Wall Street Journal reports that people don’t trust their doctors like they once did. In one anecdote, a physician said her relatives do not seek her out to ask her for medical advice like they used to. The writer concluded that patients’ trust in the health care system has fallen in recent years and physicians are no exception.
Tuesday Links
- Switzerland is the world leader in healthcare innovation.
- NIH is overpaying big universities (with “overhead” amounting to 70% to 90% in some cases) — wasting taxpayer dollars and diverting funds from scientific research.
- Global study: how did people get out of poverty? They did it themselves. Government transfers didn’t matter.
- How weight loss drugs can affect the entire economy.