- Approximately 70 percent of hazardous waste sites on EPA’s National Priorities List are located within one mile of federally assisted housing.
- Study: on the order of 1,000–1,500 additional U.S. deaths per year in the late 2010s can be attributed to Colombia’s cocaine boom.
- “The amount of blood that passes through a heart each year could fill up a swimming pool.” (NYT)
- “A Black Mississippi child is two and a half times as likely to be proficient in reading by fourth grade as a Black California child.” (NYT)
- 67% of lonely adults prefer digital friends over humans.
Category: Tuesday Links
Tuesday Links – 10 February 2026
- AMA nixes gender affirming care for youngsters.
- Bipartisan op ed by former HHS secretaries call for fair treatment for Medicare Advantage.
- Hunger in the US remains rare – especially in households with children.
- Longevity is about 50% genetic and 50% environmental.
- In addition to TrumpRX, what else could be done to encourage direct to consumer drug sales? From Cato:
That involves rolling back regulations that restrict manufacturer-to-patient sales,removing contractual and regulatory obstacles that prevent pharmacies and wholesalers from offering transparent cash prices, easing restrictions on telehealth prescribing tied to online fulfillment, and lowering the tax and compliance penalties that discourage patients from buying medicines outside third-party payment systems.
Tuesday Links – 3 February 2026
- Virginia Democrats are planning to raise every conceivable tax.
- Modern medicine saves more lives than ever. So why do patients feel less cared for?
- Does a direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug sale risk a pharmaceutical manufacturer violating the federal anti-kickback statute.
- How much of the government fraud problem results from the role of NGOs?
Tuesday Links – 27 January 2026
- California is the first state to join the WHO, after US exit.
- Why the US left the WHO.
- Study: people who eat five or more daily servings of ultra processed foods have an 82% higher risk of developing Crohn’s disease.
- Study: electronic health record issues were a potential contributor to diagnostic errors in about 61 percent of malpractice cases.
- Study: Places that produce more health care spending per capita among the elderly do not produce higher life expectancy. On the margin, there is little or no “health return” to higher medical spending.
- Fraud against government health-care programs is both common and costly.
- Congressional Democrats defend health insurance companies.
- Popcorn is actually a healthy diet choice; so is coffee and a moderate amount of salt.
- Avalere: MFN drug pricing will have no effect on 99% of Medicare beneficiaries.
- Value-based care has increased (rather than decreased) spending for the 11 million enrollees in Medicare ACO programs