- 93% of cancer centers report a shortage of carboplatin and 70% report shortages for cisplatin.
- Up to 500,000 U.S. cancer patients could be at risk of having their treatment disrupted. (WSJ)
- WHO is about to declare that Aspartame, a common artificial sweetener, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The back and forth on this issue never seems to end.
- Expected lifetime out-of-pocket spending by Medicare enrollees: $157,500 (Fidelity) to $197,000 (Employee Benefit Research Institute). (NYT)
- A single year with a grossly ineffective teacher can cost a classroom of students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings. Yet it can take 10 years and $250,000 to $450,000 to fire a lousy California teacher, and fewer than 0.002% are dismissed for unprofessional conduct or poor performance. (WSJ)
Category: Medicare
Tuesday Links
- Gorman and Goodman: Texas was right not to expand Medicaid.
- Schaeffer Center: Medicare Advantage enrolls lower-spending people, leading to large overpayments.
- Why DC is so dangerous: “the overwhelming preponderance of lethal violence is carried out with illegal weapons” and “most gun arrests don’t lead to charges.”
- Prenatal tests: Very accurate for common genetic disorders like Down syndrome. But for rare diseases, the positive results were wrong 80 percent to 93 percent of the time
- Janitor cut the power to a lab freezer, destroying decades’ worth of research materials valued at nearly $1 million.
Friday Links
- Woke ideology is subverting biology.
- About 40 percent of those surveyed said they had delayed or gone without care in the last year because of the expense.
- Cassidy: Sanders is prioritizing partisan labor legislation (that will never pass the Senate) over bipartisan health legislation (that could pass. (InsideHealthPolicy – gated)
- Medicare reform failures: “While MACRA’s goal of moving Medicare beyond fee-for-service and towards paying for value was reasonable and broadly popular, its … alternative payment models have not fostered quality improvement … and … have also failed to deliver savings.”
- Effect of Lockdowns plus teacher unions: 13-year-olds record lowest test scores in decades.
Thursday Links
- A (somewhat weak) defense of eating animals.
- The US has been falling behind other countries in life expectancy. (77 vs 82 years for all high-income countries)
- Possible reasons: we have more deaths by car crashes, gun homicides, suicides and overdoses.
- George Halvorson: Medicare Advantage is saving money for the Medicare program – despite contrary claims.
- Americans are the biggest consumers of high fructose corn syrup in the world. The reason: sugar quotas make the price of sugar in the US really high.