- Study: diet soft drinks are bad for your heart.
- The “pill penalty”: Medicare will set prices for pills, tablets and capsules 9 years after FDA approval. But biologics get 13 years. Go figure.
- Because of an outdated FDA approval process the family had to take their daughter to Italy to save her life.
- “The reason why Singapore spends so much less on health than other developed countries is its low hospital utilization.” HT: Tyler
- All you want to know (and then some) about fasting.
Category: Policy & Legislation
Federal Consumer Protection Agency Wants to Rein-In Medical Debt Collectors
The purpose of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive financial practices. President Obama signed legislation creating the CFPB in 2010. Since its inception the agency has worked to rein in abusive practices at banks, student loans taken out to attend substandard for-profit universities and abuses at mortgage brokers. Lately the federal agency has taken aim at hospital debt collectors.
Monday Links
- How the Eugenics Movement found its way into American law. (Missing: the word “progressive.”)
- Cato: 8 reforms for Medicaid. Missing: giving money to the beneficiaries and allowing direct primary care.
- “Two years into the pandemic, more than 150,000 US nursing home residents had died of COVID-19 – roughly 10% of the total U.S. nursing home population. Sadly, well-intentioned lockdowns made things worse.”
- Share of GDP spent on long term care varies from under 1% in Spain to over 4% in the Netherlands. Lots of data from a study by Gruber, et. al.
Saturday Links
- Eugene Steuerle on why Donald Trump and other wealthy people like to borrow. Recommended
- New evidence that Covid was developed in a lab. (WSJ)
- There are over 10,000 known rare diseases and most don’t have a drug approved to treat them. The FDA has approved over 19,000 prescription drugs. Could AI find cures in the 19K to treat the 10K? (WSJ)
- After Morley Safer attributed France’s lower rate of heart disease to drinking red wine in a 1991 segment of 60 Minutes, red wine sales in the United States jumped 40 percent. New research says that’s all wrong.
- AFP: What is an HSA? (30 sec video)
- AFP: How does an HSA benefit you? (30 sec video)
- Members of Congress are upset that Pfizer gave a $50 donation to Dying with Dignity, Canada.
- Danger at the beach: Sand holes are about as deadly as sharks.