- Sen Ron Wyden: Health insurers are running so-called ghost networks, in which providers are listed in networks but don’t actually offer care. Why is he surprised?
- New CMS rule would make it easier for ineligible people to continue receiving benefits and reduce safeguards to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.
- Nonprofit hospital chain sucks out profits, while leaving a poor, minority community without essential services.
- Study: More than 80% of people sampled in Greece report witnessing informal (off the books) payments for health care and the number is also high elsewhere in Europe. (Health Affairs, gated) Unfortunately the authors call rationing by price “corruption,” whereas rationing by waiting is apparently a civic duty.
Category: Tuesday Links
Tuesday Links
- Climate anxiety is a mental health problem.
- Biden: the pandemic is over, but not his emergency Covid powers.
- IRS is about to end the Obamacare “family glitch” by re-wring then law. (gated)
- The CDC has lost the public’s confidence. Is the answer to give it more money?
- The 340b program was supposes to support drug therapy for low-oncome patients. Hospitals are using it to rip us off.
- Why don’t men get more vasectomies?
Tuesday Links
- Why Jackson Miss. doesn’t have water: they gave too much of it away for free.
- Why the prohibition on consuming raw milk from your own cow really matters.
- The latest fertility numbers. It takes 2.1 births per woman of child bearing age to replace a country’s population. Most developed countries are well below that.
- The downside of capping the price of insulin: it will encourage its use over newer, better, and more expensive alternative treatments. ”That will mean more disease, more disability, and more death from diabetes.”
Tuesday Links
- ADA lawsuit abuse: A wheelchair bound disabled man filed more than 800 lawsuits alleging violations of disability access laws, including mom-and-pop shops in Salinas, Ca.
- Lab rats have rights under US law. So do monkeys, fish and finches. Octopuses, however, have no rights. (NYT: gated)
- NYC has banned the sale of whipped cream canisters to people under age 21. Teens can use them to get high on nitrous oxide.
- Increasing obesity is an international problem, but the US comes in first.
- Inadequate sleep has been connected to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, mental disorders and cancer—between the hours of 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., our cognitive abilities are worse than if we were legally drunk. (WSJ: gated)