- Who delays care because of cost? Only 29% with employer coverage; 37% with Obamacare; 39% with Medicaid and 42% with Medicare.
- Given an average waiting time of 2½ hours before being discharged, how can there be too many emergency care physicians?
- The “surprise billing” solution isn’t working: Only 4% of the roughly 90,000 payment disputes initiated between April and September have been resolved.
- A CMS rule change will lead to $700 million less savings than the CBO estimated when evaluating the act that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
Category: Health Reform
Saturday Links
- Eating two extra fries, chips, gummy bears or a single teaspoon of ice cream on a given day cancels out the calorie effect of reduced consumption due to sugar sweetened beverage taxes.
- Whole Foods founder launches “cash only” health company.
- Explaining the economic development gap: While the printing press spread rapidly in Western Europe after its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450, the Ottomans prohibited its use for almost 250 years.
- In 2019, the federal government spent $5,595 per child on programs benefiting children compared to $29,189 on the average senior.
Commonwealth Fund: Medical Care is Expensive and Many People Find it Unaffordable
The Commonwealth Fund (a proponent of Big Government health care) released its 2023 health care survey that found about half of Americans have problems affording health care.
Given the necessity of insurance to defray the full cost of health care in the United States, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the vast majority of people who had spent some time uninsured during the year would report difficulty affording their health care costs. More surprising is the large share of adults who had insurance all year but still report difficulty paying health care expenses.
Is Social Media Addictive, like Giving Drugs to Children?
Forty-two attorneys general have sued Meta because Facebook and Instagram are addictive and supposedly harmful to children. I didn’t realize social media is a public health threat. Is this something that state attorneys general should pursue like they did for opioids and tobacco?