At my local Kroger grocery store there is a waiting area next to the pharmacy with a room that says Consultations. The waiting area is rarely used. There is only the occasional person whose prescription is being filled. The consultation room is generally only used for those occasions when a pharmacist administers a vaccine. It’s mostly…
Category: News and Events
Adding Insult to Injury: Hospitals Charge for Parking, Irritating Patients and Guests
Stat News ran an article on hospital parking. It’s like adding insult to injury. In addition to patient care, hospitals are also in the business of making money off parking lots. People have no other option than to park their cars in hospital-owned lots when visiting a hospital or the medical office buildings nearby. There is even a Reddit group complaining about hospital parking fees. According to Stat News:
Wednesday Links
- Blue Cross say its reforms would save $767B over 10 years. Chief among them: pay the same price for medical care, regardless of where it is delivered. That means a facility can’t bill a higher rate to Medicare, just because it has a link to a hospital.
- To save a child from a rare disease, a one-time injection costs $1.7 million. (NYT) I don’t have a problem with the cost. But who is going to pay for it?
- Should doctors bill for answering patients’ emails? (NYT) I say, yes. Other professionals bill by time. Why should doctors do the same?
- Ten myths About nutrition. Myth No 1: fresh is better than frozen, canned or dried fruits and vegetables. (NYT)
- 3 problems with Covid boosters: (1) the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated; (2) vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines; (3) antibodies rapidly wane after a few months. (WSJ)
FDA to Decide Whether Covid Boosters Become an Annual Ritual Like Flu Shots
Did you get your flu vaccine this year? How about last year? For me it’s been a few years. As I’ve written before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must decide six months in advance which strains of influenza circulating in Asia are likely to hit North America the following winter. The flu vaccine is a cocktail of four different flu strains designed to combat the strains likely to infect Americans. Sometimes the CDC guesses right, and the United States experiences a mild flu season. In other years a strain that nobody expected somehow becomes dominant and spreads throughout the US and flu is widespread.