- Charles Murray on the case for marriage: The unvarying finding, whether measured by arrest records, substance abuse, educational attainment, employment, income, or emotional well-being, is that, on average, children growing up with married birth parents fare better than children growing up in any alternative arrangement.
- How did we go from believing that alcohol has no health benefits to the view that it explains why the French are healthier to the view that the safest level of drinking is not a single drop?
- Study: poverty increases the odds of mortality. But couldn’t there be a third factor(s) that causes people to be non-poor and healthier?
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Saturday Links
- Patriotic Millionaires call for a 90% top income tax rate, but refuse to pay that much themselves.
- Studies are finally coming out about the adverse effects of COVID vaccines.
- Study: Screen time and suicide among kids are connected.
- White House plans to provide free covid vaccinations to the uninsured.
- Moderna and IBM to make new vaccines using quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
- Study: Although Medicaid pays for contraception, age-adjusted rates of most or moderately effective contraceptive use among Medicaid beneficiaries vary almost fourfold across US counties and rates of long-lasting, reversible contraception (e.g., IUD) vary nearly tenfold.
‘Pass-Through Billing’ Health Care Scams
Nearly three years ago I wrote about rural hospital lab scams. That’s when a shady marketing consultant working with scammers convinces struggling rural hospitals that they have a solution for precarious hospital finances. Basically, every lab test ordered by affiliated physicians is billed through a rural hospital with a more lucrative lab contract. The hospital makes money for doing nothing, while the marketing guys get a big, fat cut of the proceeds. You and I pay higher prices as a result.
Friday Links
Is your Covid vaccination status a private matter? Has the government been tracking people who are unvaccinated? 73% of U.S. adults who are unvaccinated say they would not get a shot with an updated Covid formula either. How the party bases are changing: In the recent mayor’s race, Chicago’s high-income, elite neighborhoods voted for more…