- Biden Budget: more spending on the elderly: crumbs for the children. (Kids don’t vote.)
- 17,000 families in Illinois alone have lost homes to Medicaid recovery since 2021. (NYT)
- The ACCESS Act allows low-income families to redirect a portion of their (Obamacare) subsidies into a tax-advantaged health savings account (HSA).
- “The biggest deficits are showing up in the blue states that received massive [Covid] handouts … and are now facing the day of reckoning.”
- How much is a patient’s life worth in the UK?
Category: Health Insurance
Wednesday Links
- “We estimate the costs of lockdowns were at least 10 times higher than the public health benefits. Fewer than 10.000 lives were saved but hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, while the economic and educational losses are in the multiple trillions of dollars.”
- For $500,000, you can have a meal in space.
- A Republican bill would ban DEI in medical schools: No racist teaching; no racial discrimination; no loyalty oaths; and no DEI offices. (WSJ)
- Viagra could be good for your brain.
- During the pandemic, Paxlovid was free — courtesy of the federal government. Now it cost $1,600.
- Why is Oprah Winfrey shilling for Eli Lilly?
Tuesday Links – 19 March 2024
- In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Alliance for Connected care rebutted three myths:
- Telehealth Does Not Lead to Increased Fraud
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Drive Overutilization
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Increase Spending
- Older patients with diabetes do better if they have the means to pay for care (health insurance, higher income or higher wealth).
- For years contraceptives could only be sold by prescription. People can now buy oral contraceptives on Amazon.
The Good (and Bad) of Remote Patient Monitoring
When telephones began to appear in American homes and businesses physicians were one of the early adopters. As health insurance began to spread patients became more reluctant to pay out of pocket for services not covered by their health plans. For their part, health insurers were reluctant to reimburse for services outside the usual and customary practices. At some point midcentury doctors stopped routinely talking to their patients on the phone because nobody wanted to pay them for the service. If you stop and think about it nothing could be more inconvenient – and antiquated – than having to make a doctor’s appointment to record routine health information. What if your car speedometer could only reveal your speed once you pulled back into your driveway, and then only one snapshot in time during your most recent trip. Over time payer reluctance to reimburse for telemedicine began to slowly change and covid accelerated the transition.