- Study: MA enrollees have over 70% fewer hospital readmissions and 25% fewer preventable inpatient admissions. MA exhibits lower rates of inappropriate medication use and comparable rates of medication adherence.
- How AI will change education: tutors work better than classroom instruction; but while human tutors are expensive, AI tutors may be cheap.
- Prices for new US drugs rose 35% in 2023, more than the previous year. Is this what Biden is going to run on?
- Cato video on telehealth.
- More on “if the government doesn’t regulate surgery, why does it regulate new drugs?”
Category: Policy & Legislation
Federal Agencies Easy to Scam for Ineligible Health Benefits
Federal government bureaucrats love health insurance. It’s almost like a religion. They believe in health insurance for its own sake. If you pay $500 a month for health coverage that you don’t use, that’s fine because someone else in your risk pool will use it. It’s like going to church. You should just do it and the feds encourage it.
Nearly Half of Americans Know Someone Who Died of an Overdose
More than 100,000 Americans die every year from a drug overdose in the United States. In the 12-month period ended in September 2023, 111,380 Americans had died. As recently as 2015 the number of Americans overdosing was less than half of recent figures, although that’s no small number either. Overdose deaths had risen to about 70,000 just prior to the covid pandemic. Covid appears to be a catalyst that spurred more drug use, resulting in the number of deaths skyrocketing.
Annual Exams are Often a Complete Waste of Time and Money
There has long been a belief that preventive medical services save money. The theory holds that if Americans’ primary care physicians ordered more preventive medical screening services we would not only be healthier but the cost of the preventive care would be more than offset by the savings from more serious care avoided. In other words, the cost of a colonoscopy would be offset by not getting colon cancer. The only problem with the theory is that it is wrong.