- Video: A Canadian describes what socialized medicine is like in Canada. Get ready to hit your pause button to appreciate the examples.
- If you used GoodRx to find bargains on your medications, it sent your sensitive health data to tech companies like Meta and Google to use for advertising, according to the FTC.
- Researchers from Johns Hopkins found that 54 percent of people believe landlords should be allowed to deny housing to people with drug addiction and 64 percent believe employers should be allowed to deny them employment. But if addiction is defined as a “disability,” none of this would be legal.
- What a Democrat aligned advocacy group wants from Congress on health care: Continue Obamacare subsidies for the rich; extend Medicare drug price controls to everyone else; hearing, dental and eye care benefits for Medicare enrollees – regardless of income and despite the fact that those benefits are available for free from Medicare Advantage plans.
Category: Policy & Legislation
Rural Nursing Homes Closing in Unprecedented Numbers
Rural health care facilities are suffering. They’re closing amid depopulation, where the young leave for college and never return. Left in the community are those with less education and those who have aged out of the workforce. There are also fewer people with private health insurance and more on Medicare or Medicaid. Government health care programs pay less than private insurance and the fees paid by Medicare are often much lower than urban hospitals receive.
Adding Insult to Injury: Hospitals Charge for Parking, Irritating Patients and Guests
Stat News ran an article on hospital parking. It’s like adding insult to injury. In addition to patient care, hospitals are also in the business of making money off parking lots. People have no other option than to park their cars in hospital-owned lots when visiting a hospital or the medical office buildings nearby. There is even a Reddit group complaining about hospital parking fees. According to Stat News:
Wednesday Links
- Blue Cross say its reforms would save $767B over 10 years. Chief among them: pay the same price for medical care, regardless of where it is delivered. That means a facility can’t bill a higher rate to Medicare, just because it has a link to a hospital.
- To save a child from a rare disease, a one-time injection costs $1.7 million. (NYT) I don’t have a problem with the cost. But who is going to pay for it?
- Should doctors bill for answering patients’ emails? (NYT) I say, yes. Other professionals bill by time. Why should doctors do the same?
- Ten myths About nutrition. Myth No 1: fresh is better than frozen, canned or dried fruits and vegetables. (NYT)
- 3 problems with Covid boosters: (1) the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated; (2) vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines; (3) antibodies rapidly wane after a few months. (WSJ)