- Conventional wisdom holds that it takes 17 years from medical innovation to adoption in the real-world.
- Aaron Caroll on the market for prescription drugs.
- Once applicable to fewer than 500 covered entities, the 340B Program now consists of nearly 13,000 entities, including hospitals, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), and nearly 30,000 contract pharmacies.
- Doctors are using problematic race-based algorithms to guide care every day.
- Census Bureau: real median family income is lower today than it was in 2019.
Category: Friday Links
Friday Links
- Effects of the IRA bill: From 2023 to 2024, the average Part D premium rose by 21 percent — the highest increase ever. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the three largest Part D sponsors — Cigna, Humana, and Aetna — increased premiums for certain common plans anywhere from 33 percent to 57 percent.”
- The number of people getting married (per capita) has fallen to an all time low.
- IRA and CHIPS industrial policy: only 3% of projects are operational; and less than half are on track.
- Chris Pope: Elderly entitlement programs take from the poor and give to the rich.
- How testosterone and culture affect behavior of boys v. girls.
- Study: the federal government could save taxpayers up to $2.15 billion annually if insurers operating in the Medicare prescription drug plans purchased seven generic oncology drugs at the prices obtained by Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs.
Friday Links
- Three bad laws: Certificate of need, the Stark Law, and limits on physician owned hospitals.
- Out-of-pocket prescription costs under a typical silver plan are twice as high as they are in the average employer plan.
- Loneliness: 24% of Americans with a high school diploma or less education report having no close friends, compared to 10% of college graduates.
- “To ameliorate drug shortages … enable overseas manufacturers to sell products in the United States that already have received marketing approval from certain foreign governments with standards comparable to those of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and vice versa. In a word, reciprocity.”
- Ultra processed foods linked to dementia. (NYT)
- The Biden/Harris administration really is “beating” Medicare – with payment cuts for doctors, hospitals and Medicare Advantage plans.
Friday Links
- Kamala’s Medicare for All plan would be costly. Very costly.
- Around 60% of baby and toddler food items sold in major U.S. retailers fail to meet international nutritional guidelines.
- 1.81 billion people are “energy poor.”
- University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan: Kamala Harris’s votes for ARP and IRA were responsible for at least half of the excess inflation experienced during the Biden presidency.
- Medicare’s actuaries estimate because of the IRA, the average cost of providing drug coverage will rise by 179% next year. In an attempt to avert that, the Biden/Harris administration is planning to give Medicare Part D plans $70 billion, three-year “premium stabilization” program — “a massive bailout to insurers to paper over the increased costs of the Inflation Reduction Act.”