- How parents decide when and how to punish their children. It’s similar to the principles of criminal law.
- Reducing carbon emissions through subsidies (the Biden/IRA approach) costs 6 times as much as a carbon tax.
- Why the Medicare Trustees report is too optimistic: It assumes the birth rate in the long-run will increase to a nearly full native replacement of 2.0 children per woman, despite a steady and now long-standing fall to around 1.65.
- 80% of new treatments in the pharmaceutical pipeline originate in the U.S. That’s been a Godsend for the more than 55 million people living with dementia across the globe, the tens of millions worldwide who will receive a cancer diagnosis, and the more than 38 million people living with HIV.
- David Henderson’s proposal to cut Medicare spending: offer beneficiaries cash instead of a benefit in kind. I would offer everyone approved for elective surgery half the DRG rate in cash as an alternative. This is actually how some European countries handle long term care.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Bacteriophages Are Supercharged Antibiotics: Why Aren’t They Available?
Bacteriophages are viruses that kill bacteria. Phages are common, found in every nook and cranny of the natural world. There are likely trillions of them. They were first used over a century ago but remain largely unknown. A French microbiologist used them to treat dysentery in children just after World War I. They have been used extensively in Eastern Europe but not in the West.
Update on the British NHS
All is not well:
- The waiting list for hospital-based procedures stands at 7.2 million—about 12 percent of the population
- In mid-2022, 42.7 percent of all patients were forced to wait more than four hours before they received any care.
- Compared to 2019, outpatient appointments are down 13.8 percent.
- Official measures of mortality indicate that the NHS’s shortcomings are contributing to higher-than-normal death rates, with perhaps as many as 500 “excess” deaths occurring every week.
Friday Links
- Slower growth and inflation undermine Social Security’s financial health. Is Bidenomics to blame?
- Biden’s reversal of Trump energy policies are costing us $100 billion a year in lost output.
- Cato: End the kidney shortage with a real market. The market clearing price is estimated to be $80,000.
- Overdose prevention centers: the next logical step in harm reduction.
- Ezra Klein on California: “If progressivism cannot work here, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?”