- Where does AARP get its money? What difference does that make?
- Is sunlight really an antidepressant?
- Coming soon: betting on clinical trials and regulatory approvals. (Statnews)
- 2027 Marketplace Rule: bronze plans will be allowed to have Out-of-pocket exposure of up to $15,600 for an individual and $31,200 for a family beginning in 2027.
- 25 health care systems are dropping Medicare Advantage plans.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Fewer Firms Drug Test Workers for Cannabis, Mostly Due to Hiring Challenges
A manager at the company suggested it would be dangerous to have someone high on drugs in that factory, considering they had to move around huge electromagnetic coils weighing tons. I could see his point. Certain jobs need to be drug free: such as airline pilots, nuclear power station technicians, bus drivers, and truck drivers, also my surgeon. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that employers are becoming less concerned about marijuana use than in years past.
Friday Links – 17 July 2026
- Almost every study finds that paper bags are worse than plastic bags for the environment.
- British NHS update: The NHS is unable to perform 1.5m operations a year because of a drastic shortage of anesthetists, a report reveals. Over 8 million people—more than one-tenth of the United Kingdom’s population—are on waiting lists to receive health care.
- If you are traveling in Europe with a pet, your pet needs a passport.
- From 2018 to 2023, the number of direct primary care and concierge practice sites grew by 83.1 percent and the number of clinicians participating in them by 78.4 percent.
- Tele-ICU: when doctors were supposed to be monitoring remotely, one patient died.
- Sugar is necessary for life, but scientists don’t know how it got here.
Thursday Links – 16 July 2026
- “21st-century Democrats have been extraordinarily unwilling to raise taxes on anyone other than the super rich.”
- Poorer countries tend to have more occupational licensing. Denmark, Sweden and France have relatively little.
- A large body of research finds that biofuels made with food crops (e.g., corn and soy beans) are just as bad, and perhaps even worse, for the climate than conventional fossil fuels.
- “We now have just under one in three working age men who have left the labor force, mainly due to disability, the rates of which have skyrocketed by an additional seven million people since 2021.”
- Millionaires are leaving New York.