- Bernie Sanders has a new Medicare for All bill.
- Immortality may not be a blessing.
- Merritt Hawkins: The average wait time for new-patient to see a doctor is 26 days.
- CMS Proposal: Telehealth to Continue Unfettered Thru 2024. (InsideHealthPolicy)
- Social Security is already very progressive: An individual in the bottom fifth of lifetime earners receives a benefit equal to about 80% of their inflation-adjusted pre-retirement earnings. A middle quintile earner receives about 50%, while the top fifth receives 32%.
- Did Obamcare reduce the Disability Rolls? No.
- David Henderson: the reparations debate has everything backwards.
- Words of wisdom from Scott Sumner: The Fed doesn’t battle inflation, it creates inflation… The inflation we’ve experienced over the past few years is almost entirely created by a highly expansionary monetary policy, which drove up nominal GDP.
Category: Saturday Links
Saturday Links
- Sirtuins, a compound in red wine, doesn’t that make you live longer. That undermines an argument in Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t.
- Here is a critical review of lifespan.
- One more study: IQ is positively related to life outcomes.
- Sen Cassidy outlines his prescription drug policy agenda.
- Claim: 1 in 3 children in the world are poisoned by lead.
- Oncologists are rationing inexpensive cancer drugs. (NYT)
- Of 252 new drugs approved by the US FDA from 2011 to 2021, only 3 (1.2%) would meet the UK’s cost benefit threshold ($20,000 to $30,000 per quality adjusted life year saved).
- White House targets short term health insurance plans.
Saturday Links
- Top NIH official, Fauci adviser admits hiding emails regarding COVID origins
- One-fourth of 40-year-olds in the US have never been married.
- What’s wrong with price transparency? It’s tied to insurance billing codes instead of meaningful bundles of services patients can understand.
- Reason for more wealth inequality: longer life spans. (WSJ)
- Study: estimated cost of CMS delay in approving the new Alzheimer’s drug: $13.1 billion to $545.6 billion.
- Does cold immersion therapy really work? Probably not.
Saturday Links
- Milliman: the average family of four with employer-sponsored health insurance will pay—directly and indirectly—$31,065 in health costs in 2023.
- Alzheimer’s drugs: “the ability to slow cognitive decline by a small but significant margin may not translate into a noticeable day-to-day difference for patients … at a price of $26,500 annually.”
- American Compass founder Oren Cass on living standards decline: “Whereas 40 weeks of the typical male worker’s income in 1985 could provide the middle-class essentials for a family of four, by 2022 he needed 62 weeks of income—a problem, there being only 52 weeks in a year.”
- AEI response: “While Cass’ estimates imply that cost-adjusted earnings have fallen by 36 percent, when we apply conventional inflation adjustment to median weekly earnings and look at all full-time workers, we find an increase of 33 percent before taxes and 53 percent after taxes.”
- Is the exercise equipment industry one big scam?
- Scott Sumners: the Covid lab leak theory has not been confirmed.