- George W. Bush’s PEPFAR initiative is credited with saving at least 20 million lives. Nick Kristof calls it “the single best policy of any president in my lifetime.”
- Old people are the wealthiest and most powerful demographic in the United States. Despite this, they are overwhelmingly beneficiaries of the welfare state, have seniority rights in employment, and are a protected class when it comes to anti-discrimination laws. This essay argues that this is a bad thing …..
- Dickens on poverty (and an unkind word for economists).
- People think chatbots are more empathetic than doctors 80% of the time.
Category: Public Insurance
Medical Devices Need Better Quality & Regulatory Compliance
A yearlong investigation into medical device safety risks highlighted numerous medical devices either failed or harmed patients in some way. Most medical devices are not approved as drugs are. Rather, an application is made showing similarity to existing devices. If a device is a novel design a de novo request is made with the FDA.
Why People Have a Negative View of the Economy
- Real average hourly earnings are down 2.5 percent since Election Day 2020 and real median usual weekly earnings are down 3.2 percent. That latter compares with an 8.0 percent gain over the previous four years.
- Today it takes nearly 60 percent of a median family’s income to cover a mortgage on a median-priced home. The standard historically has been around 30 percent.
Wednesday Links
- A proposal: for reference pricing – why aren’t insurance companies and employers doing this?
- Cato’s Human Freedom Index: Switzerland is No. 1. The US is No. 17
- 3 million children have been dropped from Medicaid and CHIP this year.
- Homelessness is surging in blue states and blue cities.
- Bernie Sanders to introduce bill to restrict US drug prices to the prices paid by other developed countries. (Some similarity to a Trump policy that Biden rescinded.) InsideHealthPolicy — Gated