- New England Journal of Medicine article praises the separation of medical students by race while calling for the establishment of white-only affinity groups whose members should be “held accountable.”
- New York City Council: Employers can’t refuse to hire someone because they are fat.
- Austin City Council: Employers can no longer object to employee hair styles.
- Why are state regulations stricter on Children’s tattoos than they are on children sex changes? (WSJ)
- Drug shortages are nearing an all-time high — leading to rationing. (NYT)
- Half the people in New York City cannot afford to live there: necessary take-home pay: $100K. (NYT)
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Addicted to Drug Money: States Not Spending Opioid Settlement Funds on Addiction Treatment
In was the dawn of the 21st Century when untreated pain became a public health priority. In 1990 Dr. Mitchel Max, then president of the American Pain Society, authored an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine lamenting the lack of progress treating pain over the previous two decades. Within a few years Joint Commission jumped on the bandwagon and published Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign. Thus began America’s experiment in aggressive pain treatment and its descent into opioid addiction and overdose deaths.
Saturday Links
- The US government has reinstated funding to EcoHealth Alliance, the agency that collaborated on bat research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
- Krguman on how Pharma avoids paying income taxes. Answer: tax people, not corporations
- Food Stamps: “We find the fastest-growing groups of the adult caseload suffer from low employment levels and poor health outcomes.”
- Top 20 hospitals and their CEOs racked up huge pandemic profits.
Congress: Why Don’t Consumers Benefit from Drug Rebates?
When you pick up a prescription at the drugstore you don’t always pay cash, you often pay an insurance copay. Occasionally if you’re picking up a generic drug it may be free with no cost sharing, although that is far less common than it once was. My wife and I use a program called GoodRx. One time I went to CVS to pick up my dog’s medication and the pharmacy tech informed me that CVS had a special program for veterinary medications. The discounted price would be $54 as I recall. I pulled out a GoodRx coupon and asked if the coupon was good. He said it was. My new price was around $15. How is that possible?