Hardly a day goes by but what there’s a news article about opioid overdose deaths. Most deaths are tracked back to Fentanyl. According to police almost all prescription opioid drugs purchased on the street contain Fentanyl. China is thought to be the largest producer of Fentanyl and its precursors. To mitigate the risk of dangerous drugs entering the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives funding to inspect prescription drugs arriving in the mail from abroad. According to NBC News:
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Wednesday Links
- “The crackdown on [opioid] pain pills replaced legally manufactured, reliably dosed pharmaceuticals with iffy black-market products of unknown provenance and composition. Meanwhile, prohibition fostered the rise of fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute.”
- Jeffrey Singer testified with the same message. He was the Democrats’ witness!
- Telemedicine is being widely used in Ukraine.
- Paragon: In 2019, New York (state per capita income: $67,366) received $17,145 in federal Medicaid funding per person in poverty, while Alabama (state per capita income: $43,288) received $6,148.
- CBO’s options for reducing health care spending: establishing caps on federal spending for Medicaid; limiting state taxes on providers; reducing the federal Medicaid match rates; increasing Medicare Part B premiums; reducing Medicare Advantage benchmarks; and reducing the tax subsidies for employment-based insurance, etc. What about a free market for health care?
Monday Links
- The IRA bill threatens orphan drugs.
- Study finds links between the popular zero-calorie sugar substitute erythritol and an increased risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attack and stroke.
- But the study has limits. (NYT)
- Death on demand: Canadian euthanasia is killing about 27 people a day on average — over 10,000 a year.
Friday Links
- Scott Atlas reviews our experience with Covid: mortality rates, natural immunity, vaccines, lockdowns, and more.
- Can Chat GPT replace doctors?
- More than 8 million Americans with diabetes rely on insulin; yet surveys find that one in six people who use insulin say they ration the drug because of the cost.
- Elizabeth Warren report finds that medigap insurers do what every other insurer does: reward agents for sales of its policies. Of course, seniors in Medicare Advantage plans don’t need medigap policies.
- Eli Lilly’s announcement that it will cap at $35 a month what patients pay out of their own pockets for the company’s insulin has two problems: (1) the company already had such a policy in place, and (2) the company says the cap will not have much, if any, effect on what many people are actually paying.