- Teens who use cannabis face 11 times the odds for a psychotic episode compared to teens who abstain from the drug, new Canadian research contends.
- The fertility rates in some countries (e.g., South Korea). Are below 1.0. That is less that one birth for every two adults.
- Why the unwinding of the (Covid-related) expansion of Medicaid didn’t cause an increase in uninsurance: Nearly half of the 5.9 million people who were projected to become uninsured … already thought they were uninsured.” in a 2022 survey.
- Homelessness is bad for your health.
- Whether worker pay has kept up with productivity depends on how you measure “worker pay” and how you measure “productivity.” Is this a joke?
- GPT4 passes the restaurant review Turing test. Observers can’t tell whether the reviewer was human or not.
- How CMS wants to regulate your access to drugs.
Category: Health Insurance
Friday Links
- “The energy stored in a human baby’s tissues accounts for only about 4 percent of the total energy costs of pregnancy. The other 96 percent is extra fuel required by a woman’s own body.” (NYT)
- The (leftwing) American Prospect complains that Medicare Advantage plans are spending $64 billion a year on such supplemental benefits as dental, vision, gym memberships, etc. – benefits that those in traditional Medicare enrollees don’t get. C’mon, guys. If traditional Medicare weren’t so inefficient, it could offer those benefits as well.
- How the Biden administration is negatively impacting Medicare.
- Do for-profit hospitals practice cream skimming (taking on healthier patients with lower costs of care)? No. it’s the nonprofits that are more guilty of this practice.
- Giving blood is an alternative to a payday loan.
Study: Pharmacists Can Provide Cost-Effective Care for Minor Illnesses
Over the years I have often cited the figure that more than 60% of care, at least initially, is self-care when patients treat themselves with OTC drugs. As an aside, if we really want to boost access to care we need to force the FDA to move more prescription drugs to over the counter, or even behind the counter. A behind-the-counter drug is a drug that pharmacists are authorized to dispense without a prescription. Over the counter drugs, behind the counter drugs and prescription drugs are all available at pharmacies. Perhaps there should be more care available at pharmacies.
Wednesday Links
- Why we age.
- Can Ozempic be used to fight opioid, alcohol and nicotine addiction?
- The case for a natural origin for Covid.
- “A whopping 36.2% of respondents aged 18-25 reported a diagnosable mental illness according to the DSM IV in the last year.… At the extremes, 57% of very liberal students in our study reported feelings of poor mental health at least half the time, compared to just 34% of very conservative students.” HT: Arnold Kling
- The U-Shaped happiness curve has disappeared.