- Research bias: Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women.
- AI can even reportedly “taste wine” with 95% accuracy.
- There is “no money to be made in finding ways to reduce costs in health care.” Peter Coy reviews Why Not Better and Cheaper?: Healthcare and Innovation.
- Judge rules Louisiana cops can be sued for raiding the home of a man who joked about pandemic on Facebook.
- Physician quality regulation: There are more than 2,200 metrics and we have spent more than over $1.3 billion measuring them.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Wednesday Links
- Should the government be able to monitor (in real time) patients who get opioid prescriptions?
- There are now 3 times as many non-faculty as there are faculty per student at the best schools in the U.S. HT: Arnold Kling
- RAND report: Mainstream news coverage is geared towards upholding pre-established narratives. Actual reporting has become exceedingly rare.
- Study: Hospice care saves money.
- Why nurses matter.
- Study: two years after unionization, nursing homes were more than 30 percentage points more likely than nonunion nursing homes to report an illness or injury to OSHA.
Was Obamacare a Plot to Usher in Medicare-for-All?
At the time of the Affordable Care Act’s passage, many suspicious conspiracy theory proponents suggested the goal of Obamacare was to fail in order to usher in a single-payer program of Medicare-for-All. The theory goes something like this: with nowhere to turn except the government, Americans would finally throw up their hands and acquiesce to government intervention. Seniors purportedly all love their Medicare, so why not expand the program to cover everyone?
Why Has Medicare Spending Slowed?
Spending per Medicare beneficiary has nearly leveled off over more than a decade.
If Medicare spending had grown the way it had for much of its history, federal spending would have been $3.9 trillion higher since 2011, and deficits would have been more than a quarter larger, according to an Upshot analysis. The difference is more than could be saved by raising the eligibility age for Social Security or converting Medicaid into a block grant, controversial proposals raised by legislators concerned about the federal debt.