- CBO: the US is on track to add $19 Trillion in new debt over the next ten years.
- The US produces only 14% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for generic drugs. India, China, and Italy are the top producers
- Site neutral payments could save Medicare $150 billion over ten years. (And stop encouraging hospitals to buy up doctor practices.)
- Are physician-owned hospitals the answer to hospital concentration?
- John Cleese explains extremism.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Fewer Doctors Staff Hospital ERs (Saves Money, Boosts Profits)
I only recall going to the emergency room once in my life. It was afterhours and I fell and cut my knee on a floor HVAC grate putting, parallel cuts on my knee cap. I was 12 or 13 at the time and had to have between 20 and 30 stitches. The cost to have my knee sewed up afterhours was around $150 as I recall. When adjusted for inflation that’s about $800. Go figure. If I had the same injury today the ER cost would be just short of $1 million assuming it was in-network. Of course, ER providers are never in-network thanks to private equity buying up emergency medical practices and investing in ER staffing firms.
Wednesday Links
- Study: the closing of the donut hole increased the use of prescription drugs by Medicare enrollees. It also looks like there was more substitution of branded drugs for generics.
- Study: Our findings suggest that shifting child care from the home to the market increases labor force participation and improves child outcomes.
- Study: “we find that bans or restrictions that specifically target ‘assault weapons’ increase demand for handguns, which are associated with the vast majority of firearm-related violence.
- The Peltzman effect: When you make an activity safer, there tends to be an offsetting (more risky) behavioral response.
Tuesday Links
- Valentine fact of the day: one in four female physicians is married to another physician. It’s called “assortive mating,” and Charles Murray noted some time ago that it is one reason why we are “Coming Apart.” Call it “Cupid’s invisible hand.”
- New York state drops masking rules for hospitals and nursing homes. But facilities can impose their own rules.
- Infant mortality is twice as high among black mothers as among whites and this is true for rich women as well as the poor.
- Climate change subsidies: it helps if you’re rich.
- If the “abortion pill” is banned, there is an off-label use of another drug that will achieve the same result.
- Art Laffer has a new book.