- Biden supports striking health care workers over patients. Actually, the president appears to believe every worker should get more pay – meaning, I suppose, we should all pay more for everything we buy.
- Lancet study on warming: In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing and service sectors were lost to heat exposure.
- Sen. Tim Scott was right: Thomas Sowell points out that in 1960—almost 100 years after slavery—only 22% of African-American children grew up in homes with one parent. Thirty years later, after the expansion of the welfare state under the Great Society, that percentage had tripled. (WSJ)
- Should medical debt be banned from credit reports? (NYT)
- In the 1950s and 1960s, the Army used blowers on top of buildings and in the backs of station wagons to spray a potential carcinogen into the air surrounding a St. Louis housing project where most residents were Black. More here
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Paying People Not to Work
The March 2021 American Rescue Plan … extended a program that added $300 each week to a state’s standard [unemployment] benefit. A separate part of the bill expanded eligibility … to workers such as the self-employed.
Why There Is a Nursing Shortage
I began my career in health care more than 30 years ago working at a hospital. For as long as I can remember there has been a nursing shortage. The reasons given for this are many, most of which are wrong. When I was a budget analyst, a senior vice president (SVP) told us nurses are caring people. He added nurses make great mothers and often quit to raise their kids. He explained that the staffing shortage was exacerbating the staffing shortage by increasing the stress levels of nurses on staff.
Thursday Links
- To deal with misleading ads in the Medicare Advantage open enrollment period, CMS has tried every possible remedy except the obvious one: let doctors advise their own patients about the choices.
- Inequality in life expectancy: “the least-educated Americans have seen their death rates surge in a way that more-educated Americans have not.
- A Trump executive order requires giving consumers full pricing information for medications. It looks like the courts are going to force the Biden administration to enforce that rule.
- Covid vaccine mandates are back – in red state Texas!
- Food stamp spending has doubled in the last four years.
- David Friedman wonders if he can escape death.