Measure 110 never worked well from the start. Last July I wrote state officials, advocates for drug reform laws and Oregon residents are left wondering whether Measure 110 needs small reforms, is merely experiencing growing pains or should be scrapped altogether. Also, one has to wonder if the tax revenue supporting treatment centers was supposed to mitigate the increase in drug use by making drug use less risky.
Category: Health Insurance
Bad Deal: Hospitals Discover Concierge Medicine
I just read about a troubling trend: Hospital-owned concierge medical practices. This is where hospitals establish a concierge practice for the purpose of attracting a few hundred wealthy members (I mean patients) willing to pay $2,000 to $4,000 apiece to be able to get quick access to their physician.
Wednesday Links
- Cancer phobia: In 2017, 21.3 million American women had cancer screening tests even though they were outside the age ranges for recommended screening. 10.1 million men outside the recommended age ranges had a PSA test.
- People with Obamacare health insurance are being switched to other plans without their knowledge or consent by rogue agents.
- Why are expensive cancer treatments excluded from Medicare’s price negotiations?
- Henry Miller: “The vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, prevented 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization.”
Tuesday Links
- Food stamp households spend a disproportionate share of their food budget on unhealthy items, such as sugary beverages and prepared desserts. And it’s worse than other low-income households who don’t have food stamps.
- Social Security tells Kotlikoff the number of Social Security clawback letters per year is probably closer to 3 million. (It started at 1M in a congressional hearing; then jumped to 2M in answer to a FOIA request by KFF; and now it’s at 3M. (No telling what the real answer is.)
- Less than half of the benefit of Obamacare subsides goes to the newly insured. One-third of it is wasted.
- In 2023, 79 percent of (Obamacare) enrollees received subsidies (up from 44 percent in 2015), at an average cost of $20,739 per enrollee gaining coverage.