- Valentine fact of the day: The US marriage rate has fallen by half since 1900.
- National income per capita was below $19,000 in 1955. In 2025 it approached $69,500. (John Cochran’s entire piece on “Misplaced Nostalgia” is worth reading.
- A drug selling for $3,2 million a dose is not safe, not effective and still on the market.
- A global budget (not tied to FFS) saves a rural hospital financially. But there is no improvement in the quality of care.
- Should drug ads be required to include more useless information?
- The average wait to see a physician is now about 31 days.
- Eugene Steuerle: “Congress has left Social Security, Medicare, and many healthcare programs on autopilot and expanding faster than the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) or income…. they alone, along with interest, now account for more than 100 percent of projected future inflation-adjusted spending growth and over 125 percent of revenue growth.” (Entire piece recommended)
- Why “a calorie is not a calorie.”
Category: Public Insurance
Pharma Study of the 340B Program
- In a conservative estimate, 340B providers pocketed over $1 billion in marked-up charges to state employee health plans. When including teachers and other state and local public employees, these marked-up charges ballooned up to $1.8 billion.
- Across the country, there are patients enrolled in employee health plans that pay more in out-of-pocket costs than their 340B provider paid to buy the same medicine. These overcharges totaled about $44M nationwide.
Will Tulsi Gabbard find election fraud in Georgia?
The most important thing to know about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s seizure of 2020 election ballots and other material in Fulton County, Ga., is that she knows what happened to Attorney General Bill Barr. When Barr told President Trump in December 2020 that the Department of Justice could find no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the election, Trump demanded his resignation.
Trump doesn’t want to be told he lost the 2020 election, and Gabbard doesn’t want to be fired.
WSJ: Competition is Driving Down Prices of Weight-Loss Drugs
With untold millions of people worldwide who could benefit from GLP-1 drugs, but unable to afford them, lowering price to boost market share is a way to maximize revenue. Along the way competition between the makers of GLP-1 drugs is also driving down the price of drugs to levels middle class consumers can afford.