More than 30 years ago when the cost of health care was much lower compared to the average wage of American workers. In the late 1980s, for example, the percent of GDP spent on health care was just over 10%. It’s nearly 20% today. Around that time a politically motivated attorney general began looking into the amount of charity care provided by nonprofit hospitals within the state to make sure hospitals were providing enough to justify their tax breaks. The investigation ultimately found hospitals in the state were providing enough charity care to avoid further investigation, but perhaps the question should have been why was the bar set so low?
Category: Health Reform
Saturday Links
- Bernie Sanders has a new Medicare for All bill.
- Immortality may not be a blessing.
- Merritt Hawkins: The average wait time for new-patient to see a doctor is 26 days.
- CMS Proposal: Telehealth to Continue Unfettered Thru 2024. (InsideHealthPolicy)
- Social Security is already very progressive: An individual in the bottom fifth of lifetime earners receives a benefit equal to about 80% of their inflation-adjusted pre-retirement earnings. A middle quintile earner receives about 50%, while the top fifth receives 32%.
- Did Obamcare reduce the Disability Rolls? No.
- David Henderson: the reparations debate has everything backwards.
- Words of wisdom from Scott Sumner: The Fed doesn’t battle inflation, it creates inflation… The inflation we’ve experienced over the past few years is almost entirely created by a highly expansionary monetary policy, which drove up nominal GDP.
Friday Links
- We have been advocating OTC birth control for years.
- Adverse selection problems in insurance markets go away if people must insure by household rather than as individuals. At least in Pakistan.
- Is your doctor employed by a private equity firm? (NYT)
- AARP Represents Health Insurers, Not Seniors
- Is compression of morbidity being reversed? Considering 300 diseases in the USA from 1990 vs. 2017, health span (health-adjusted life expectancy) grew by 2 years, but life expectancy grew by 3 years.
- The Health Care Blog goes wacko: “The greatest health equity threat to Medicaid – and Medicare – beneficiaries is the climate crisis.”
FDA Finally Approved an OTC Oral Contraceptive; Now it Should Approved Competing Ones
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally approved an over-the-counter hormonal birth control pill.
At a time of unrelenting attacks on reproductive autonomy, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision on July 13 to approve a birth control pill for over-the-counter (OTC) use is an important advance toward providing people with tools to control their fertility. This includes preventing unwanted pregnancy. Having Opill, a safe, effective, easy-to-use birth control option available without a prescription is essential, because it so difficult for many people to get prescription birth control in the U.S.