- Biden wants to reinstate the airplane mask mandate.
- AMA wants physician pay reform: inflation indexing, but no HSA expansion or price transparency.
- JAMA: hospitals are marking up the cost of cancer drugs by as much as 634%.
- Three ways the government caused the baby formula shortage.
- The Covid Health Emergency is over, but politics and pork are keeping it going.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Can Medical Associations Gut the No Surprises Act?
The Arizona Medical Association (ArMA) is considering a state ballot measure to remove a key provision of the No Surprises Act (NSA), in order to boost fees of out-of-network physicians. The NSA is a federal law protecting patients from surprise medical bills, which went into effect January 2022. Balance billing is the term in industry parlance for surprise medical bills. Balance billing occurs when out-of-network physicians (who patients could not avoid) charge fees higher than what their health plans reimburse. Prior to the NSA, patients were responsible for any portion of out-of-network fees their insurers did not pay. The ArMA does not wish to gut so-called patient protections. However, the ballot measure would result in higher fees and higher premiums for consumers nonetheless. More on this below.
Surprise medical bills are unfair to patients and health plans alike. Health plans try to steer patients to providers who have agreed to specific terms and have negotiated fee agreements with a network. Selecting network providers reduces patient cost-sharing and in some health plans out-of-network care is not covered at all. Thus, patients have a strong financial incentive to seek care within their network.
FDA: Poop is a Drug
Your gut is made up of 39 trillion microbial cells that live inside us, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. These outnumber the human cells that make up our bodies, which number roughly 30 trillion. The microbiome as it’s called is only 1% to perhaps 3% of our body mass, but without these beneficial bacteria life would not exist. The human gut is home to thousands of different species of bacteria, and something like 5,000 different strains. These are what converts food into energy while also keeping harmful bacteria in check.
Who Pays the Corporate Income Tax?
Phil Gramm and Mike Solon in the WSJ:
the idea that rich capitalists own corporate America is largely a progressive myth. Some 72% of the value of publicly traded companies in America is owned by pensions, 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts, charitable organizations, and insurance companies funding life insurance policies and annuities. The overwhelming majority of involuntary sharers in stakeholder capitalism will be workers and retirees.