- Covid lockdown measures worldwide reduced the seismic noise of the planet by up to 50 percent.
- Canadian study: for roughly half the population, drinking coffee increases the risk of kidney dysfunction.
- The federal government is now required to engage in explicitly racist hiring.
- David Henderson: The “1619 Project” on Hula vindicates Capitalism (WSJ)
- The generic drug market isn’t as competitive as we thought.
- Digital health: The share of U.S. adults who said they use health applications has grown 6 percentage points to 40% since December 2018, while the share of adults who said they use wearables has grown by 8 points to 35%.
Category: Wednesday Links
Wednesday Links
- Study: the closing of the donut hole increased the use of prescription drugs by Medicare enrollees. It also looks like there was more substitution of branded drugs for generics.
- Study: Our findings suggest that shifting child care from the home to the market increases labor force participation and improves child outcomes.
- Study: “we find that bans or restrictions that specifically target ‘assault weapons’ increase demand for handguns, which are associated with the vast majority of firearm-related violence.
- The Peltzman effect: When you make an activity safer, there tends to be an offsetting (more risky) behavioral response.
Wednesday Links
- The human circulatory system is 60,000 miles long.
- While waiting for government price negotiations to begin, Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. have raised prices on nearly 1,000 products so far this year.
- Matt Holt discovers that he pays more for drugs than his insurer does – just like Medicare enrollees. Too bad he didn’t do more to help stop the congressional Democrats from rescinding the Trump executive order that would have ended this practice—at least for Medicare.
- Are politicians playing doctor on marijuana, or are they just getting big brother out of the way?
- JAMA: AI can’t be included as a coauthor on published articles.
Wednesday Links
- Blue Cross say its reforms would save $767B over 10 years. Chief among them: pay the same price for medical care, regardless of where it is delivered. That means a facility can’t bill a higher rate to Medicare, just because it has a link to a hospital.
- To save a child from a rare disease, a one-time injection costs $1.7 million. (NYT) I don’t have a problem with the cost. But who is going to pay for it?
- Should doctors bill for answering patients’ emails? (NYT) I say, yes. Other professionals bill by time. Why should doctors do the same?
- Ten myths About nutrition. Myth No 1: fresh is better than frozen, canned or dried fruits and vegetables. (NYT)
- 3 problems with Covid boosters: (1) the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated; (2) vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines; (3) antibodies rapidly wane after a few months. (WSJ)