I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. My parents house was 19 miles East of the Colorado border. The adjacent Colorado counties were so sparsely populated that the ranches were open range. There were no fences. The local hospital where I got my tonsils removed only had 9 beds. The hospital is county-owned, as is the long-term care facility. Some of the local health care providers are subsidized by the county, with free office space and guaranteed incomes. Otherwise, the only health care providers would be miles away in other counties.
Friday Links
- Is Obamacare’s requirement that preventive services be provided with no patient cost sharing unconstitutional?
- New York Times: Older doctors should be given competency exams. One-third of US doctors are 60 years of age or older.
- Have nurse’s license, will travel: The average weekly rate for travel nurses is $3,080 — about $700 less than it was a year ago.
- Since its founding in 1973, the DEA has intercepted a fraction of one percent of illicit drug trades.
- Physicians want to protect their guild from proposals to let nurses do what they are trained and qualified to do.
- Cato paper: “Medical decisionmaking is increasingly under the purview of law enforcement. Practitioners and patients alike are often prejudged as criminals.”
FDA Approves Fecal Transplants as though it were a Drug
Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) are difficult to treat and can be deadly. CDI is an infection of the gut when the gut bacteria are thrown out of balance and populated with Clostridium difficile rather than a healthy biome. The standard treatment is antibiotics, which can also wreck beneficial gut biome. CDI often is recurrent, coming back time and time again.
Thursday Links
- The social upside of dangerous motorcycle riding.
- Does anyone remember Climategate?
- Harvard study: Medicare could have saved $3.6 billion in a single year if it had bought generic drugs from Mark Cuban’s online pharmacy. (DMN)
- Health Affairs study: no evidence that the child tax credit had an effect on the wellbeing and mental health of parents.