- In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Alliance for Connected care rebutted three myths:
- Telehealth Does Not Lead to Increased Fraud
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Drive Overutilization
- Telehealth Has Not Been Shown to Increase Spending
- Older patients with diabetes do better if they have the means to pay for care (health insurance, higher income or higher wealth).
- For years contraceptives could only be sold by prescription. People can now buy oral contraceptives on Amazon.
Category: Telemedicine
More Physicians Messaging Patients by Email (and Billing for it)
Probably around 50 years after telephones made their arrived in doctors’ offices physicians stopped using them to communicate with patients. The reason was because health insurance enrollment was growing and third-party payers were not willing to reimburse for phone consultations, while few doctors wanted to work for free. That has been changing over the past few years (the former, not the latter).
Monday Links
- Biden reverses course – reinstates Trump policies he initially cancelled.
- Why can’t you have a televisit with a doctor in another state?
- Cato is having an online forum on telehealth.
- “The program’s stated goal is to “raise the nutrition levels of low-income households,” yet 40 percent of adult SNAP (food stamp) recipients suffer from obesity and almost 45 percent have received a diagnosis of diet-related disease — far higher rates than the general population.”
- AEI against the House-passed tax bill: “A parent of multiple children with $20,000 of annual income would face an effective tax rate of 83 percent if they took a full-time job paying $40,000 per year.” But that’s because of the other means tested welfare benefits.
The Dark Side of Telemedicine
I love telemedicine. I have long been an advocate of being able to talk to your doctor on the phone when you have a health complaint. The alternative is often driving across town and waiting in a crowded waiting room with other sick people. I have long believed the natural progression of telemedicine would be (or at least should be) people buying Bluetooth devices that check vital signs and connect seamlessly to your doctor’s computer to make telemedicine even more robust. This would help your doctor know even more about your medical complaint than listening to you on a cellphone or seeing you through a grainy video feed.