Health Insurance – Page 180 – The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Should You Own Your Cells if They’re Valuable?

Posted on August 2, 2023August 1, 2023 by Devon Herrick

Imagine you own a plot of land under which oil is found. Whether or not you have a right to a share of the wealth is determined by whether you own the mineral rights. Suppose you own a field and one day you discover a previous owner buried their life savings on the property 160 years ago. This year the owner of a cornfield in Kentucky found more than 700 gold coins dated between 1840 and 1863 buried on his land. Does he own those coins? Generally, unless there was some compelling evidence that the original owner was the government or it was used in a crime.

How about if your doctor was treating you for cancer and discovered an interesting phenomenon in your cancer cells?

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Are Asylums the Answer for Mentally Ill Homeless?

Posted on August 1, 2023July 31, 2023 by Devon Herrick

The homeless population is reaching epic proportions in high-cost cities and is glowing in places where homelessness was never as prevalent. Although the reasons are many, the homeless are poor, often have uncontrolled substance abuse disorders or suffer from mental illness. Often the homeless have all the above. High rents exacerbate the above problems.

On an average night, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, close to 600,000 people in the country will be homeless—a figure seen by many as an undercount. More than 40% will be “unsheltered,” or “living in places not suitable for human habitation,” and about 20% will be dealing with severe mental illness.

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New York Times: Fake Science Used to Promote Many Heath Products

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Devon Herrick

Whether you’re in the grocery store aisle, drugstore aisle, flipping through the pages of a lifestyle magazine or perusing Amazon, health products are everywhere. Too many of their claims are based on bogus science, pseudoscience, psychobabble or good old-fashioned snake oil. Often the names and claims sound scientific but too often are not. A new term to describe fake scientific claims is “scienceploitation”.

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Saturday Links

Posted on July 29, 2023July 28, 2023 by John C. Goodman

The Biden White House pressured Facebook and Instagram to censor Covid facts, including its origin.
Now we know: Scientists who signed a paper claiming a natural origin for Covid turn out not to have believed it themselves. (WSJ)
The real DeSantis record: In 2020 Florida had the tenth lowest age-adjusted Covid death rate in the country, nearly 20% lower than California’s. (WSJ)
When did people stop being drunk all the time? From the Middle Ages to the pre-industrial era, the average person consumed about a liter of beer a day, around four times as much as consumption in modern beer-drinking countries. HT: Tyler
DEI training doesn’t work: 30 years of data from more than 800 U.S. companies show that mandatory diversity training programs have practically no effect on employee attitudes — and may even backfire.
An estimated 795 000 Americans become permanently disabled or die annually because dangerous diseases are misdiagnosed. Just 15 diseases account for about half of all serious harms. HT: Arnold Kling

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