New research has identified proteins, found in a single drop of blood, that may hold clues to our health and the diseases we’re likely to develop years into the future.
Category: Direct Primary Care
Medicare and Wegovy
A report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) estimates that treating even half of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with obesity would cost $166 billion per year, nearly the cost of total spending on all prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
Source: STAT (gated)
Monday Links
- How politically biased is the new JAMA editor?
- David Friedman on Project 2025.
- Making medical school tuition free does not produce more primary care physicians or send more graduates to underserved areas.
- Claim: more than 100 million Americans are without regular access to primary care.
- Chinese government officials are implementing mandatory testing of large language models to make sure they “embody core socialist values.”
- Everything to know about occupational licensing. Recommended
We Are Becoming More Like Canada Every Day
A study of a group of community health clinics in the OCHIN Network found that only 43% of patient specialty care referrals were successfully completed between October 2022 and September 2023. This means patients did not receive necessary follow-up care more than 57% of the time. Even when patients booked a referral appointment, they were forced to wait an average of 73 days for access to a gastroenterologist, 62 days for a cardiologist, and 54 days for a behavioral health specialist.