I love telemedicine. I have long been an advocate of being able to talk to your doctor on the phone when you have a health complaint. The alternative is often driving across town and waiting in a crowded waiting room with other sick people. I have long believed the natural progression of telemedicine would be (or at least should be) people buying Bluetooth devices that check vital signs and connect seamlessly to your doctor’s computer to make telemedicine even more robust. This would help your doctor know even more about your medical complaint than listening to you on a cellphone or seeing you through a grainy video feed.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Tuesday Links
- Health care spending drops back to 17.3% of GDP.
- A less rosy view of the future of heath care spending.
- Paragon Health Institute: Medicaid expansion leads to a surge in spending, but reduces healthcare access for traditional Medicaid enrollees such as low-income children and people with disabilities and it doesn’t improve health.
- Biden: IRA drug rebates are saving seniors “as much as $618 per average dose on 47 prescription drugs.” Reality: Prescription drug prices increased by 2% under Trump, by 5.5% under Biden, and by nearly 6% in November. (WSJ)
AEI Corrects the Record
- New research by Gerald Auten of the US Treasury Department and David Splinter of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation finds that the after-tax income share of the top 1% has barely changed since 1962. More.
- Is it true that 1 in 8 American households are so poor that someone must skip a meal each month to get by? No, it is not—the real number is more like 1 in 50. More.
- Biden: The expanded child tax credit “cut child poverty in half in 2021.” Proper modeling: expanded CTC alone would have reduced the child poverty rate to 8.3 percent in 2021. More.
- The left-leaning Center for Budget Policies says we need housing subsidies because of market failure in the housing market. In fact, public housing subsidies are anti-marriage: Per HUD data, only 3% of subsidized housing serves “two adults with children.” More.
Monday Links
- IRA Medicare Part D reforms explained. There is a huge reduction in the government’s contribution to the program that Republicans never talked about.
- Alex and Tyler discuss efficient gift giving.
- A different view of gift giving.
- 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease.
- Milei is taking his “chain saw” to Argentinian government programs. On the chopping block: the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity.