- In defense of drug decriminalization: what Oregon and Portugal got wrong: Jacob Sullum and Jeffrey Singer.
- Biden’s attack on Short-term insurance is not only bad policy, it’s cruel.
- Cato: Extend OTC status to all birth control pills, not just one.
- Why it ls hard to know whether you own your own cells.
- If you give people a free 10k, what will they do with it? HT: Tyler
- Dylan Scott asks: Why doesn’t health insurance pay for more mental heath therapy?
- I answered this question more than two decades ago: here, here and here.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Tuesday Links
- George W. Bush’s program to combat AIDS in Africa has saved as many as 25 million lives — more lives than any other US government policy in the 21st century.
- Sunday was the 58th birthday of Medicare and Medicaid. The cost of Medicare has grown from $10 billion in its first year to nearly $750 billion last year. Taxpayers spend nearly $730 billion a year on Medicaid, up from under $1 billion at its inception.
- Chip Kahn and a whole slew of hospital affiliated authors: If value based purchasing doesn’t work, it’s not our fault.
- The cost of medical privacy: The original Privacy Rule from 2000 is 419 pages of dense legalese. This is in addition to revisions to the rule from 2002 (93 pages), 2013 (137 pages), 2014 (27 pages), and 2016 (15 pages).
- Over the last few years, the rate of death from Covid for the unvaccinated has been between 300% and 900% higher than for the vaccinated.
- Mental health problems diminish with income HT: Tyler
- Stress really can cause your hair to fall out. (NYT)
- Some patients are paying as much as $100,000 a year for unproven ways to live longer. (WSJ)
New York Times: Fake Science Used to Promote Many Heath Products
Whether you’re in the grocery store aisle, drugstore aisle, flipping through the pages of a lifestyle magazine or perusing Amazon, health products are everywhere. Too many of their claims are based on bogus science, pseudoscience, psychobabble or good old-fashioned snake oil. Often the names and claims sound scientific but too often are not. A new term to describe fake scientific claims is “scienceploitation”.
Health Affairs: A Bad Job Can Make You Feel Bad
In popular culture the notion of an undesirable employment situation having a negative impact on one’s health is common. We have all heard friends and colleagues say, “that job is going to kill me” or “my boss is driving me crazy.” People the world over spend so much time at work that work is often highly associated with self-identity. Research is increasingly finding our popular notions are indeed true. A bad job can kill you, make you feel depressed and sometimes physically ill.