Policy & Legislation – Page 55 – The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Friday Links

Posted on July 8, 2022July 25, 2022 by John C. Goodman

Scott Sumner on the FDA’s reversal – allowing pharmacists to prescribe the Pfizer Covid vaccine: Is 350 people dying every day the reason the government finally saw the light?
A pocket-sized, smartphone-directed ultrasound could become as “ubiquitous as the stethoscope.”
Are we in danger of losing control of Monkeypox?
During the US Open, airplanes were diverted from the match’s airspace and flew over other neighborhoods. The result: more insomnia, more cardiovascular disease, and more substance abuse and mental health emergencies. But great tennis!
Covid hasn’t gone away: There were many more new COVID infections in the past week in the US than in the corresponding week 1 year ago and 2 years ago.
Telemedicine surged during the pandemic:

Weekly telemedicine visits for one insurer increased from a mean of 773 in 2020 prior to stay-at-home orders to 45,632 in subsequent weeks. Patients who were older, had existing chronic conditions, were male, or resided in predominantly non-Hispanic Black or African American Census tracts showed increased telemedicine utilization in later weeks of the pandemic.

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Big Pharma Blames Hospitals and PBMs for High Drug Prices

Posted on July 7, 2022 by Devon Herrick

Adam Fein at Drug Channels pointed me to a June 2022 report from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) on the price of drugs. The report is full of tidbits on drug spending. For example, the report states that prescription drug spending represents only 14% of health care expenditures. It is true that drugs are the best value in health care (especially over-the-counter drugs but that was not in the report). While it is true that drugs tend to be a better value than, say hospitals, not all drugs are of equal value. (That too was not in the report.)

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Make Sure that “Free” Obamacare Health Screening is Actually Free

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Devon Herrick

Yet another article on making sure your “free” health screenings under Obamacare are actually free. When something is as convoluted and bureaucratic as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) there are bound to be problems. Since late 2010, when this provision of the ACA took effect, many patients have paid nothing when they undergo routine mammograms, get one of more than a dozen vaccines, receive birth control, or are screened for other conditions, including diabetes, colon cancer, depression, and sexually transmitted diseases. That can translate to big savings, especially when many of these tests can cost thousands of dollars.

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Why Did the FDA Authorize Vaccines for Toddlers?

Posted on July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by John C. Goodman

[W]e don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective. The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency. The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation….

Only 209 kids between 6 months and 4 years old have died from Covid—about 0.02% of all virus deaths in the U.S. About half as many toddlers were hospitalized with Covid between October 2020 and September 2021 as were hospitalized with the flu during the previous winter. More children were hospitalized during the Omicron wave last winter, but hospitalization rates were still roughly in line with the 2019-20 flu season. None of the 5,400 or so toddlers in Moderna’s trial were hospitalized for Covid. Yet at least 15 were hospitalized for non-Covid infections.

Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal

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