What if we could detect almost all cancers in the earliest stages when less-invasive treatments mean lifesaving cures? The answer: Mortality rates — and health care costs — would plummet because most cancers could be cured or controlled using existing therapies.
The good news is this innovation exists today in the form of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) from one blood test. The bad news is we don’t have an Eisenhower administration determined to deliver a medical game-changer to as many Americans as possible.
Instead, we have a Biden administration — in the form of the Federal Trade Commission and Chair Lina Khan that Biden named to head it — standing in the way and creating an impenetrable barrier to access to millions of cancer patients.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Friday Links
- Could redistribution of income make people healthier? Evidence that the answer is “yes.”
- 330 COVID-19 articles in science journals have been retracted.
- NYC to help patients compare hospital costs. (NYT)
- More from Graboyes on sterilization.
- Steve Moore to Congress: ESG is harmful to retirees.
- Merck sues over IRA drug price negotiation: It’s an unconstitutional “taking” and it also “compels speech.”
Do Cash Payments Lower Death Rates? (The Left Says “Yes” but They’re Probably Wrong)
A popular idea among progressives on the left is a universal basic income (UBI). Supposedly, UBI is magic. It involves giving cash transfers to everyone without strings attached. According to scholars at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill:
The goals really differ, depending on the policymaker but also on who’s proposing it. I think for a lot of folks on the left, they see it as more a platform to build your life on. So it’s going to be there for you when you when you need it.
Thursday Links
- AEI: Return the savings from site neutral payments to the hospitals. It’s called taking from the rich and then giving back to the rich.
- Where are we on the status of (legally) importing drugs from Canada? We’re getting close.
- Update on hospital price transparency: “The widescale noncompliance of 75.5% of hospitals is due to most hospitals’ files being incomplete, illegible, or not having prices clearly associated with both payer and plan.”
- A new model for cell and gene therapies: Medicaid pays only if they work.
- AI Quote of the week:
So far I have explained why four of the five most often proposed risks of AI are not actually real – AI will not come to life and kill us, AI will not ruin our society, AI will not cause mass unemployment, and AI will not cause an ruinous increase in inequality. But now let’s address the fifth, the one I actually agree with: AI will make it easier for bad people to do bad things.