- The rise in reported maternal mortality rates in the US is largely due to a change in measurement. HT: Tyler
- Can Ozempic be a substitute for insulin for diabetics?
- Ozempic and Wegovy could slash the risk of heart attacks and strokes, even if patients don’t lose weight.
- Paragon Health’s solution for Medicare: more means testing.
- The Heritage Foundation has a similar proposal.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Monday Links
- The U.S. military now estimates that the cartels directly control around 30-35% of Mexican territory. Over eighty politicians or candidates for political office were killed in Mexico during the country’s 2021 midterm elections. (HT: Tyler)
- Does living around people with a college degree lengthen your life expectancy? Apparently.
- Reasons to doubt the USDA report on the prevalence of food insecurity.
- Why the Biden/Harris claim that they have legalized marijuana is mostly false.
- What explains the slowdown in Medicare spending? A major reason is pharmaceuticals.
Why are So Many Americans Self-Medicating with Herbal Remedies and Dietary Supplements?
Hardly a day goes by but what I hear about health food elixirs, herbal remedies or new health biohacks that are supposed to improve your life. These often claim to make you age more slowly, reduce your stress levels or provide some nebulous health benefit like detoxing. These dietary supplements are often in the form of capsules or liquids you ingest but sometimes intended to mixed into smoothies. Plants have a lot of medicinal effects. Many medicines were originally derived and synthesized from plants. In antiquity people turned to plants because medicinal plants were their only options.
Wednesday Links
- The case for value -based drug pricing.
- The costs of mask wearing: To be exempted from a three-month mask mandate, the average person was willing to pay $525, and some (0.9%) were willing to pay over $5,000.
- Are prisons turning into de facto nursing homes?
- Are scientists trying to cure sickle cell disease through gene editing doing so by using the genomes of white Europeans?
- Health risk assessments — typically in-home reviews of enrollees’ health status – add as much as $12 billion in risk adjusted payments to Medicare Advantage plans.