- Woke ideology is subverting biology.
- About 40 percent of those surveyed said they had delayed or gone without care in the last year because of the expense.
- Cassidy: Sanders is prioritizing partisan labor legislation (that will never pass the Senate) over bipartisan health legislation (that could pass. (InsideHealthPolicy – gated)
- Medicare reform failures: “While MACRA’s goal of moving Medicare beyond fee-for-service and towards paying for value was reasonable and broadly popular, its … alternative payment models have not fostered quality improvement … and … have also failed to deliver savings.”
- Effect of Lockdowns plus teacher unions: 13-year-olds record lowest test scores in decades.
TeleNurse: Virtual Nursing is Growing
I have long been a fan of telemedicine. The first time I wrote about telemedicine was in 2007. The following quote is how I explained it to D Magazine in 2013:
“This is a daily occurrence in consumer markets, but is absent in healthcare markets because health plans [including Medicare and Medicaid] pay 89 percent of medical bills,” Herrick says. “You can talk to your attorney over the phone; he or she will bill you for his or her time. You can talk to your accountant over the phone. But most people don’t routinely consult with their physician over the phone because insurers are reluctant to pay for telephone consultations. Many health plans will only reimburse for physician visits if they are in-person—even though more than half of all contacts with primary care physicians could be done by email or over the phone.”
Thursday Links
- A (somewhat weak) defense of eating animals.
- The US has been falling behind other countries in life expectancy. (77 vs 82 years for all high-income countries)
- Possible reasons: we have more deaths by car crashes, gun homicides, suicides and overdoses.
- George Halvorson: Medicare Advantage is saving money for the Medicare program – despite contrary claims.
- Americans are the biggest consumers of high fructose corn syrup in the world. The reason: sugar quotas make the price of sugar in the US really high.
Eponyms: Is Your Medical Condition Named After a Sketchy Doctor?
Do you lose sleep at night worrying about eponyms? Apparently, a lot of researchers in academic medicine do. Perhaps your next question is: what the heck is an eponym? According to the Oxford dictionary:
[A] person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named.