According to a Kaiser Health News / NPR investigation, 100 million Americans are saddled with medical debt. This includes 41% of adults. KHN reports that more than half of adults have gone into debt to pay for medical bills within the past five years. One quarter of those with medical debt owe more than $5,000, while 20% never expect to pay it off. Going into debt to pay medical bills is no worse than indebtedness for a car, house, a boat or designer clothes. However, much of this debt is despite having health coverage of some type.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
How a Needless Test Starts a Cascade of More Unnecessary Tests
A man came into the Denver VA hospital complaining of a painful hernia near his stomach. His doctor knew he needed surgery immediately but another doctor had ordered a chest-ray, which is standard practice. The X-ray revealed a shadow, possibly a mass (cancer) or more likely a harmless cluster of blood vessels. A follow-up CT scan showed his lung was fine but found something suspicious on his adrenal gland. A second CT scan cleared his adrenal gland but by this time two months had gone by. It would be another four months due to scheduling conflicts before the man finally got his surgery. This “cascade of care” is what results when one test is ambiguous resulting in additional tests that ultimately find nothing was wrong in the first place. These unnecessary tests and procedures are what medical research refers to as “low-value care.” There are no clinical benefits from low-value services and potential for harm.
Is the Covid Health Emergency Being Extended to Preserve the Expansion of the Welfare State?
From Paragon Health:
Medicaid enrollment and spending exploded during the pandemic as Congress passed legislation that boosted the federal government’s share of Medicaid costs in exchange for states keeping everyone enrolled, even when they were no longer eligible. Now 15 million or more people who are ineligible are enrolled in Medicaid. The federal spending boost, which is highly inflationary, and the Medicaid enrollment requirements persist with the official public health emergency.
Monday Links – 13 June 2022
- In addition to Obamacare’s “family glitch” there is also a “rural glitch.”
- Why don’t the Chinese use a highly effective mRNA vaccine as a booster? Because that would be tantamount to admitting that their homegrown Sinopharm vaccine was inferior.
- State of Virginia to foster kids: turn over your Social Security benefits or else.
- Improved prevention, screening and treatment has helped to avert 3.5 million cancer deaths in the US over the past 3 decades. However, the cancer death rate among Blacks is almost twice the rate for Whites.
- Cancer cure breakthrough: personalized treatment that relies on the patient’s DNA. HT: Tyler