- Landmark 15-year transgender study: Around one-in-10 children expressed “gender non-contentedness” to varying degrees. But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they “often” or “sometimes” were discontent with their gender.
- Illegal immigrants are leaving hospitals with billions in unpaid hospital bills.
- Was your operation performed by a doctor? Or by a medical student in training? And how do you really know?
- Only half of all adults are married. And that’s not good, because “Marriage predicts happiness better than education, work and money.” (NYT)
- NEJM in the 1930s: “When it did address Nazi ‘medical’ practices, the Journal enthusiastically praised German forced sterilization and the restrictive alcohol policies of the Hitler Youth.”
- More on why the 2017 tax cut was a good idea.
Category: Direct Primary Care
Friday Links
- Do you know what a “walkaway death” is?
- Headline I wish I hadn’t seen:
One of the Heritage Foundation’s telehealth policy recommendations for a 2025 GOP president stands at stark odds with policies advocated by telehealth stakeholders and included in GOP-backed telehealth aimed at cementing Medicare telehealth permanency.
- Heritage, of course is right. See Mandate for Leadership (2025) Pages 483 and 488.
- How California uses Medicaid to rip you off. It taxes providers, then gives the money back as Medicaid funding and draws federal matching money in the process. (WSJ)
- NYT (for the first time, I think) allows its lead editorial to advocate the buying and selling of kidneys. (NYT)
- Glasses matter: Garment workers, artisans and tailors in Bangladesh who were provided with free reading glasses experienced a 33 percent increase in income compared to those who were not given glasses.
- More on Glasses: For nearly a billion people in the developing world, reading glasses are a luxury that many cannot afford. (NYT)
Bad Deal: Hospitals Discover Concierge Medicine
I just read about a troubling trend: Hospital-owned concierge medical practices. This is where hospitals establish a concierge practice for the purpose of attracting a few hundred wealthy members (I mean patients) willing to pay $2,000 to $4,000 apiece to be able to get quick access to their physician.
Friday Links
- California had the worst job growth of any state.
- How Medicare pays providers: for the fiscal year that began on October 1, the new rule for hospital inpatient care is just short of 800 pages, with three columns of text for most of the published pages. The physician fee schedule and skilled nursing facilities rules for 2024 run 1227 and 147 pages, respectively.
- Other things equal, 3 psychological traits (competitiveness, risk tolerance, and confidence) lead to higher incomes.
- The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review determined that a cost-effective price for the newly approved gene therapy Lenmeldy is between $2.3M and $3.9M. Orchard Therapeutics, will be asking $4.25M.
- Why is colon cancer rising among young adults, but falling for seniors?