Late last summer Pamela Ludwig, owner of a Franklin, Tennessee firm that goes by the name Pretty in Pink Boutique, began receiving calls from angry Medicare enrollees across the country. The seniors were mad that their Medicare accounts had been charged for urinary catheters they did not need, nor had received. About the same time 1,300 miles away in El Paso, Texas Erika Tavarez too began receiving angry emails and then a visit from the FBI. She had recently sold a durable medical equipment business, also called Pretty in Pink, that provided prothesis for breast cancer survivors.
Category: Public Insurance
Tuesday Links
- Should you get a full body MRI?
- Did you know that some public employees are paid to do nothing more than administer public sector unions?
- Why do nearly 90 percent of those with opioid use disorder lack access to evidence-based treatments like long-term medication-assisted treatment (MAT)?
- The traffic accident death of world-record marathon runner Kelvin Kiptum is not that unusual. Road crashes are now one of the top causes of the deaths in Africa.
- Scientists make progress toward developing blood tests for psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Does Society Hate Old People?
Kaiser Health News (now called KHN) published an article titled, “Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?” The inflammatory headline was about the high death toll of older adults from covid, saying:
The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.
Should Outcomes Research Discount Quality of Life when Computing Value?
To gauge the relative value of any health intervention the outcome needs to be measured and compared to some desired result. Cost effectiveness analysis is a tool used to compare the cost of outcomes from various interventions. For instance, preventive medical services are compared to other lifesaving interventions using the outcome life years saved. This allows public health advocates to decide how to allocate scare resources.