- Since 2001, Medicare physician payments have fallen 30 percent behind the rate of inflation.
- The rising cost of Obamacare: CBO: subsidies will cost $1.3 trillion over the next decade and Medicaid expansion will cost another $1.4 trillion. (WSJ)
- Claim: Group purchasing organizations (GPOs) are partly responsible for drug shortages. (Speculative)
- Medicare Part D enrollees: expect more restrictive formularies and utilization controls. Plans “may steer Medicare beneficiaries to use drugs that have to be administered by a doctor rather than pills that can be picked up at a pharmacy.”
- Three weaknesses with hospital “all payer” systems: (1) self-insured employers (most large companies) are exempt, (2) Medicare Advantage plans are exempt and (3) hospital participation must be voluntary.
Category: Thursday Links
Thursday Links
- Doctors as holograms. (NYT)
- Study: Nearly one-third of those age 60 or older without cardiovascular disease are using aspirin, even though the risks outweigh its benefits for many of those patients.
- Why we have a debt problem: average revenue as a percent of GDP over the past 50 years = 17.3%. Average spending = 21%. (CBO/WSJ)
- The White House flip flops on gender-affirming medical procedures and then flips again.
- Restrictions on flavor-vaping products cause youths to switch to cigarettes instead.
Thursday Links
- Sex matters. (Although some people are claiming it doesn’t)
- Julian Assange gets a plea deal: no jail time from misuse of classified documents. Hmm. Isn’t this the same crime for which a special prosecutor is trying to send Trump to prison?
- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is wrong: Biden not Trump, added more to our pubic debt than any other president in history.
- “Black youth were 10 times more likely to die by homicide than white youth, and Native American youth were twice as likely to die by suicide than white youth.” Recommended.
- Is it hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk? No.
- The uninsured share of the population will rise from 7.7% to 8.9 percent in 2034.
Thursday Links
- Does the Constitution guarantee a right to take drugs?
- How did this become a crime? McKinsey allegedly tried to help Purdue tailor its sales efforts to doctors who already prescribed oral opioid drugs.
- Yglesias: Americans have been gaining weight for as far back as we have records.
- More from Yglesias: The human animal … evolved to overeat a modest amount whenever food is widely available in order to hedge against starvation risk in the future.
- New Alzheimer’s treatments are bogged down by Medicare’s bureaucracy. (Chicago Tribune)