Years ago I crossed into Mexico from Weslaco, Texas. You could park on the U.S. side and walk across the bridge into Mexico. If you pull up Weslaco on Google Maps it lists eight different pharmacies or clinics within several blocks of the international border crossing. Google Maps does not always list every business. There are probably more than eight. As I recall there were rows of pharmacies. The storefronts were often narrow but deep. On one side of the pharmacy was cheap drugs while on the other side was cheap liquor.
Category: Medical Tourism
Friday Links
- Cost and benefits of legalizing pot: The economic benefits are broadly distributed, while the social costs may be more concentrated among individuals who use marijuana heavily. Recommended.
- Capitation v. fee-for-service medicine: fewer visits and fever services.
- Alex Tabarrok on “deaths of despair.”
- Ending homelessness: the case for “Housing First.” Timothy Taylor is always good, but I think I disagree with this.
Blue Zones: A Spartan Lifestyle That Will Make You Blue
The concept of healthy living goes back to ancient Greece and then to the Romans. Nowadays healthy living often comes off as preaching about how people should live their lives rather than how they choose to live their lives. An interesting saga of improving life and longevity is by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner. He began with the study of centenarians, people who reach the age of 100.
Thursday Links
- The AMA’s Advancing Health Equity guide is a joke. But after the laughter dies, it is also very sad.
- British Columbia to send thousands of Canadian cancer patients to Washington state for treatment.
- Paragon: Medicare’s venture into “value based care” has done little except add administrative burden and a set of quality metrics that are easily gamed and don’t translate into better or more efficient care.
- Trump’s executive order allowing employers to fund individually owned health insurance is taking hold.