Senior care is expensive. A family member required nursing home care for just over two years and her costs added up to about $275,000 over the course of her stay. She was only able to remain in her own home after her husband died because she had a companion to help with household chores.
Category: Single-Payer/Medicare-for-All
FTC Claims PBMs Jacking Up Drugstore Prices
Since I wrote about carving out Medicaid drug benefits versus carving in benefits the industry changed. Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) began to consolidate to the point where the top three now control about 85% of the drug market. When three firms dominate an industry to that degree their behavior can go from benevolent (i.e. competing for business) to malevolent, self-dealing behavior.
Thursday Links
- Trudeau’s legacy: Canada’s per capita income has fallen to below 70% of what it is in the U.S.
- Do hospital mergers damage local economies and result in an increase in deaths by suicide and drug overdoses? Maybe not.
- Telemedicine under Medicare gets a 3-month extension.
- Each year, 120,000 die from snake bites and about 400,000 lose limbs to amputation.
- Study: Sugary drinks were linked to 2.2 million additional cases of Type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million cases of cardiovascular disease in 2020, with a disproportionate share of those cases concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
- Wastewater, even after treatment to make it drinkable, contains high levels of forever chemicals.
- Evolution of Part D plans over a decade: more prior authorization and step therapy requirements
Wednesday Links
- Controversial Meta-analysis of 74 studies finds a relationship between fluoride exposure and lower IQ.
- Then downside of fewer diagnostic categories in Medicare Advantage: increased incentives for risk selection and reduced incentives to provide high-quality care to beneficiaries with diagnoses in the excluded groups.
- “Our findings reveal that hospitals (for-profit and nonprofit) have consistently maintained higher profit margins than insurance companies…. our analysis suggests that high hospital prices drive insurance premiums.”
- Does investing in social determinants of health pay off?
- No, moderate drinking will not give you cancer. See also, WSJ