AI is causing some doctors to rethink what it means to be a physician. What is their purpose in the age of chatbots that can spit out accurate answers to medical questions 24 hours a day and do not take vacations. Will AI boost the productivity of doctors the way tractors boost the productivity of farmers? Or will it put skilled knowledge workers out of a job like the assembly line did to cobblers and tailors?
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Wednesday Links – 11 February 2026
- Food stamp fraud.
- “In what some experts deem one of the largest examples of Medicare waste in history, Medicare spending on wound care products known as “skin substitutes” skyrocketed from $256 million in 2019 to over $10 billion in 2024.”
- The city enjoying a Super Bowl parade:
- More than 35% of office and retail space downtown sits vacant, with even some prime waterfront properties sitting empty.
- The region lost 12,900 jobs last year, the first annual decline since the recession of 2009.
- It also has the highest inflation rate of any major metro region in the country with consumer prices soaring 29% from 2021 through 2025.
The quarterback for the Seahawks, Sam Darnold, faces a California tax bill exceeding $200,000, which more than cancels out the $188,000 payment he (and every other member of the Seahawks) will receive from the NFL for being the winner.
Pharma Study of the 340B Program
- In a conservative estimate, 340B providers pocketed over $1 billion in marked-up charges to state employee health plans. When including teachers and other state and local public employees, these marked-up charges ballooned up to $1.8 billion.
- Across the country, there are patients enrolled in employee health plans that pay more in out-of-pocket costs than their 340B provider paid to buy the same medicine. These overcharges totaled about $44M nationwide.
Will Tulsi Gabbard find election fraud in Georgia?
The most important thing to know about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s seizure of 2020 election ballots and other material in Fulton County, Ga., is that she knows what happened to Attorney General Bill Barr. When Barr told President Trump in December 2020 that the Department of Justice could find no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the election, Trump demanded his resignation.
Trump doesn’t want to be told he lost the 2020 election, and Gabbard doesn’t want to be fired.