TelaDoc, the largest telehealth firm in the United States, saw its stock price nosedive by more than 60% in the past month. TelaDoc’s stock price is down 78% from its high last year. This is significant considering health care experts predicted telemedicine would get a huge boost from Covid and telehealth visits become mainstream. What’s behind the stock slide? Was it profit-taking by early investors or has the public’s interest in telehealth waned? By the way, TelaDoc was founded in Dallas in 2002 and funded my early policy work on telemedicine 15 years ago under different leadership.
Category: Health Reform
Covid Forced Nurses’ Salaries Higher; Hospitals Hated It
It is common for hospitals to use nurse staffing agencies, sometimes called “rent-a-nurse” to fill shifts when needed. The downside is temp agency nurses costs more per hour than staff nurses who are hospital employees. During times when nurses are in short supply, as was the case with Covid, nurses are in such high demand they can safely work for staffing agencies knowing they will have plenty of work and higher pay.
Abortion Made Easy
All you need is a few pills and a laptop.
the majority of abortions in the U.S. are now done through the use of abortion pills. It is a two step process, and the two medications must be prescribed by a physician. Until last December, women were required to see a physician in person, but the FDA permanently lifted those requirements, following a temporary waiver during the pandemic. The pills are considered both highly effective and safe. There are startups, like Hey Jane and Just the Pill, that specialize in them.
The Most Rapid Change in Family Structure in Human History
This is David Brooks:
If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.