Menu
The Goodman Institute Health Blog
  • Home
  • Authors
    • Devon Herrick, Ph.D.
    • John C. Goodman
  • Popular Topics
    • Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare
    • Consumer-Driven Health Care
      • Affordable Care Act
      • Cost of Healthcare
      • COVID-19 and Public Health
      • Doctors & Hospitals
      • Public Insurance
      • Policy & Legislation
    • Direct Primary Care
    • Health Economics & Costs
      • Drug Prices & Regulations
      • Health Insurance
      • Health Reform
    • Medical Tourism
    • Telemedicine
    • Medicare
      • Single-Payer/Medicare-for-All
  • Goodman Institute
  • Contact
  • Search
The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Wednesday Links

Posted on August 16, 2023August 15, 2023 by John C. Goodman

Jeff Goldsmith does an about face: vertical integration in health care doesn’t work.

Study: Which matters more for ER spending – price increases or upcoding? Next study should examine the IQ of the insurers who pay the ER fees.

99% of hospitals pharmacists report drug shortages, causing 85% to ration treatments and 84% to rely on different dosages. (STAT)

Another cost of covid lockdowns: fewer stage 1 cancers were diagnosed and treated – leading to more stage 4 cancers and deaths. (WSJ)

The next president of Argentina may be a libertarian.

School Choice in Los Angeles: It works.

Scott Sumner has the best explanation I have seen on why inflation is a monetary phenomenon – something Keynesians have been slow to accept.

1 thought on “Wednesday Links”

  1. Bob Hertz says:
    August 16, 2023 at 11:08 am

    Thanks for posting on the little-known (but profound) effects of up-coding on the medical spend.

    We could have the most pristine Medicare-for-all program that still did not save us a nickel– because providers would find the highly-paid niches in the schedule.

    You imply that insurers should fight back against upcoding, and are fools if they don’t.
    Fighting each individual upcoded claim would be very costly in time and staff…simpler to just pay the larger claims, and go back to the employer with higher premiums.

    George Halvorson (ex-head of Kaiser) was in charge of claims at a Midwest insurer in earlier years. He once went to a hospital CEO and asked him why claim payments kept going up. The CEO said, “We can outsmart any new fee schedule in a few weeks. For a really tough fee schedule, it takes maybe 6 months.”

    Loading...
    Reply

Join the conversation.Cancel reply

For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

Visit www.goodmaninstitute.org

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 41 other subscribers

Popular Topics

©2026 The Goodman Institute Health Blog | Website by Lexicom
%d