- Arizona ballot measure would cap interest rates on “medical debt” and limit the ability of lenders to seize assets or garnish wages.
- Under a new California law, families must separate not just recyclables from trash, but food waste from recyclables — so they can be composted.
- Does coloscopy screening reduce colon cancer deaths? No. Explanation at Less Wrong
- Study: “we calculate that disparities in air pollution can account for 17-26 percent of the Black-White earnings gap, 5-27 percent of the Hispanic-White earnings gap, and 6-20 percent of the average neighborhood-earnings effect.”
- Can your building make you sick?
Nearly 334,000 Medical Providers Quit in 2021
Public health experts have long predicted that the United States will increasingly suffer from a shortage of physicians. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the physician shortage could reach 120,000 medical providers by 2034. A new report finds that nearly 334,000 health care providers left the field in 2021. This includes doctors and nurse practitioners.
As a profession, physicians lost the most members, with 117,000 individuals leaving their roles last year, followed by nurse practitioners, which lost 53,295 members and physician assistants, with 22,704 positions vacated, according to a report published Thursday by Definitive Healthcare.
Monday Links
- Cotopaxi Drugs joins 11 Walgreens stores that have closed in the last three years due to rising crime in San Francisco. HT: CTUP
- Study: After a nuclear accident, Japan shut down all its nuclear reactors. That led to an increase in energy prices and that led to more deaths.
- Every time a drug switches from prescription to OTC, the total number of doctor visits drops.
- Does earlier detection of lung cancer lead to better survival: Here’s why we don’t know.
- David Friedman on Black Reparations and other issues. Recommended.
- Tyler Cowen: “Single parent families can be disastrous. In Colombia the current rate of that is 84 (!) percent. In Argentina, Mexico, and Chile it is more than half. For India I see estimates ranging from 4.5 percent to 7.5 percent for single parent families.”
Surgeon General Believes Toxic Workplaces are a Public Health Hazard (Seriously?)
It seems in recent years that the definition of public health has grown to include a lot of things seemingly unrelated to public health. The age-old definition of public health includes combating infectious disease and communicable illnesses. Covid-19 is definitely something that can be passed around, as is influenza. Attempts to control the spread of deadly pathogens falls well within the area of public health.