According to a recent report in the Washington Post, a $3 billion scam involving urinary catheters has brought to light serious flaws in Medicare, prompting strong calls for reform….
Category: Health Economics & Costs
We Are Becoming More Like Canada Every Day
A study of a group of community health clinics in the OCHIN Network found that only 43% of patient specialty care referrals were successfully completed between October 2022 and September 2023. This means patients did not receive necessary follow-up care more than 57% of the time. Even when patients booked a referral appointment, they were forced to wait an average of 73 days for access to a gastroenterologist, 62 days for a cardiologist, and 54 days for a behavioral health specialist.
Social Medicine: Would You Attend Interactive Group Therapy on YouTube?
Surveys going back 20 years have consistently found that more than 100 million Americans search online for health information annually. Google reports there are roughly 70,000 health related searches every minute. One article even claimed doctors use Google and YouTube to learn about disease and conditions they treat.
Friday Links
- What health policy proposals are in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025? (1) Medicare Advantage will be the default option for Medicare enrollees, (2) site neutral payments by Medicare, (3) replace the physician fee-for-service system with value-based payments and (4) physician owned hospitals.
- Is the Republican Party becoming more anti-trade and anti-legal immigration?
- “I estimate that the combined losses to tenants and housing providers of a typical [Joe Biden type] rent control policy would be over $50 billion per year.”
- Biden’s rent control proposal changed from a cap of 5% annual rent increases to a cap of $55 – presumably because he had trouble reading the prompter.
- More horror stories from the British National Health Service.