The so-called social determinants of health (SDH) is an initiative by public health advocates to identify nonmedical factors that affect health status. A related field of study is racial disparities in health. In a nutshell, poor minorities supposedly suffer from a myriad of health problems related to lower income, less education, lower access to medical care, living in food deserts, enduring poverty, microaggressions, discrimination, living in lead and smog-tainted neighborhoods on the wrong side of the tracks, etc.
Category: Medicaid
Was 1955 the Golden Age of Health Care Finance?
The 1950s was a simpler time in medicine. Mostly absent was the bureaucracy and overhead required nowadays when billing multiple insurance companies and government programs. Doctors mostly had one price, with perhaps a small discount for BlueCross. Most Americans paid their physician visits directly. This was about the time when Americans were beginning to acquire health coverage through work. Congress intentionally created an incentive for employers to offer coverage when it exempted employee health insurance from taxes. Health insurance was relatively cheap in 1955 because technology was primitive compared to now, and medical inflation was not yet a thing.
Lots of Fraud
A lot of ink is being (justifiably) spilled over the Minnesota welfare fraud, in which Somali communities defrauded the Medicaid system out of at least $250 million, and as much as $18 billion. But this is only the biggest and most audacious case of government fraud that has cropped up in recent years.
Source: Noah Smith
Dazed and Confused: Seniors Are Overmedicated.
Seniors are overmedicated. Ninety percent of seniors, age 65 or above, take a prescription drug. The average number of drugs seniors take increased 43%, from 3 in 2000 to 4.3 in 2020. Too often seniors get on prescription drugs and never get off them. They just add to the total over the years.