- The first human implanted with a chip from Elon Musk’s computer-brain interface company can move a computer mouse with thought alone.
- A completely false headline: Banning surprise medical bills is raising costs elsewhere. (STAT: gated) It’s saving patients money and causing insurers to pay a bit more. What else would you expect????
- Shkreli Awards (for 2023) have arrived. My favorite: the CEO of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital chain gets a salary of $35 million.
- More evidence in favor of the Mediterranean diet.
- Families USA (which traditionally has advocated socialism in health care) has a quasi-capitalist plan for health care reform.
- After all these years, Matthew Holt still can’t figure out how to reduce health care costs. (Hint: look at how costs are reduced in every other market.)
Category: Health Reform
Obamacare’s Three Key Failings
- Obamacare worsened the quality of individual market health insurance and caused millions of people to replace better coverage with worse coverage. Obamacare substantially raised premiums and deductibles and most plans exclude top hospitals and doctors.
- The rising costs from Obamacare led more small businesses to drop health insurance.
- The law’s coverage expansion now costs taxpayers more than $200 billion a year — almost all of which are subsidies to health insurers — without improving health outcomes.
Source: Brian Blase
Wednesday Links
- Study: Too much niacin may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. It helps me combat vertigo.
- A person younger than 18 shot and killed another child somewhere in the United States once a day, every day — on average last year. (NYT)
- Study: Teens turn to drugs because of stress.
- Are cancer patients being overdosed with cancer drugs?
- Among millions immunized, largest Covid vaccine study yet finds links to health conditions.
Annual Exams are Often a Complete Waste of Time and Money
There has long been a belief that preventive medical services save money. The theory holds that if Americans’ primary care physicians ordered more preventive medical screening services we would not only be healthier but the cost of the preventive care would be more than offset by the savings from more serious care avoided. In other words, the cost of a colonoscopy would be offset by not getting colon cancer. The only problem with the theory is that it is wrong.