- The Covid lockdowns appear to have caused a spike in alcohol related deaths.
- Why don’t we see dynamic pricing in health care?
- Why is Medicaid paying for Housing?
- 11 percent of U.S. 12 graders report using delta-8 (a psychoactive substance derived from hemp that is chemically very similar to delta-9-THC, the molecule in marijuana responsible for causing the high associated with taking cannabis).
- Social Security and Medicare spending are set to nearly double by 2033.
- Harvard’s Dr. Martin Kulldorff got the big things right on COVID, more than perhaps any other academic expert in America. He was censored on Twitter, fired by Harvard and fired by the CDC.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Yale: Low-Income Medical Students Under-Represented in MD/PhD Programs
Researchers at Yale University did a study of prospective students applying to MD/PhD programs. It found (as if this is news) that these programs do not attract a wide diversity of students, especially from lower-income backgrounds.
Between 2014 and 2019, applicants from families with higher household incomes were accepted at increasingly higher rates, a trend not found among other income brackets.
Yale researchers lament the lack of diversity in MD PhD programs, which is decreasing slightly.
Wednesday Links
- Kaiser does a deep dive into doctors billing for email.
- Of eight states that have not recovered job losses for Covid, seven are blue.
- Joe Biden’s budget: like the original (2020) budget, this one would lower output and worker wages. Also the $400,000 threshold (below which no taxes) is not indexed—so eventually the Biden taxes will reach everyone on the income ladder.
- Biden’s budget v. the House Republican budget.
- A completely bureaucratic view of when patient preferences should be honored.
- Claude 3 Opus Fails Steve Landsburg’s Economics Exam.
Another Example of How Hospitals Employing Physicians Harms Patients
In the game of who can gouge patients and employer health plans more, hospital systems are mailing their physician employees’ patients ominous news, hoping to force insurers to pay more for services. Your physicians likely do not share in any higher fees, although you may have higher cost sharing for their services. I have yet to get such an email or letter in the mail, but I have read several articles over the years when various Dallas-area hospital systems talk to the media about dropping BlueCross of Texas or something similar.