- Study finds socioeconomic gaps in deaths by alcohol and wonders how we can achieve equality. That’s easy: have successful people drink more.
- Spain bans air-conditioning below 80 degrees during record-setting summer heat.
- Pfizer CEO tests positive for Covid.
- Democrats could have used the IRA bill to add on all kinds of abortion protections; yet not a single amendment was offered.
- Five ways the government has made things worse, not better, for diabetics.
- Why you can’t trust the Covid death statistics.
- More on the debate over SSRIs.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Where the Covid Relief Dollars Went
In the midst of the pandemic, the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”
The federal government provided about $5 trillion in relief money in three separate legislative packages. The result: “one of the largest frauds in American history.”
Wednesday Links
- Socialized medicine by stealth: Medicaid rolls during the pandemic have swelled by 24 million—a 34% increase—while two million more adults have enrolled in ObamaCare exchange plans.
- Were Democrats being “racist” when they left 2.2 million (disproportionately Black) poor people without health insurance while giving subsidies to high-income (disproportionately white) people. This is consistent with the history of social insurance.
- Covid Vaccine backlash: “10 percent of those vaccinated said they wish they hadn’t done so, while 15 percent of adults said they have been diagnosed with a new condition by a medical practitioner weeks or months after the first dose.”
- Study: Mandatory paid sick leave reduces ER visits. If so, employers and employees should be able to voluntarily adopt it until the marginal benefit equals the marginal cost. Duh!
Tuesday Links – 16 August 2022
- Public-health communication around monkeypox has been an orgy of euphemism and wokespeak, misleading and baffling if you don’t understand what isn’t being said.
- Kids going crazy: “Between 2016 and 2020, there were significant increases in children’s diagnosed anxiety and depression.”
- Financial therapy integrates financial and emotional wellness. But is it health care?
- Birx: pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna are to blame for thousands of deaths because their refusal to pursue a “compassionate use authorization” for the COVID-19 vaccines led to a delay which directly impacted nursing home residents.