- “Dopamine is probably the most famous neurotransmitter in the brain…. It has a long history, and a lot of baggage.”
- Could the government’s price negotiations actually make drug prices higher?
- Social Security’s Financial Reality Is Worse Than Reported: “Despite nearly 20 years of declining and low actual fertility rates, currently sitting at 1.62 births per woman, the Trustees have just this year lowered somewhat the ultimate fertility rate from 2.0 to 1.9 children per woman…”
- How we pay for health care: Total federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and individual market subsidies alone amount to $1.67 trillion per year…. In addition, income tax exemptions for employment-based insurance reduce federal revenues by over $300 billion per year.
- Controlling the cost of insulin: the market works better than government.
Category: Health Insurance
What difference Has Telemedicine Made?
In 2020, Medicare patients receiving care at health systems in the highest quartile of telemedicine use had 2.5 telemedicine visits per person, compared with 0.7 telemedicine visits per person in the lowest quartile of telemedicine use.
Source: Edited from “Medicare Utilization, Spending, And Quality, 2019–22” in Health Affairs.
Doctors Shun Primary Care, Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants Do Too
The physician shortage could reach 86,000 doctors by 2036, of which nearly half of the missing doctors could reflect shortages in primary care. One reason is demographics. The average age of physicians is 47 for women and 55 for men. Many of the older practicing physicians are among the Baby Boomer generation, who will be retiring soon and need care for themselves as they grow old. Another reason for the shortage is a 1996 federal law capping the number of graduate medical education training slots that Medicare will fund.
There Is An Emerging Black Market in Healthy Poop for Medicinal Use
We have all probably watched a television show or movie where a clandestine drug deal occurs. In movies a nervous buyer often meets a nervous seller in a seedy part of town. Money and products are exchanged with both hoping the other is not a cop. Either party could try to steal what the other has without keeping their end of the bargain. This is probably mostly fiction, but clandestine exchanges of drugs do occur. Buying and selling illicit drugs is a dirty business, but Slate magazine describes new levels of filth: selling human poop for medicinal use.