I began my career in health care as a staff accountant for a nonprofit hospital. At the time the prices didn’t seem that outrageous. Prices were high, but not seize your house to pay for a hangnail high. How times have changed.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
NYT: Veterinary Telemedicine is Growing
When Covid began to spread in 2020 veterinary clinics were closed to walk-in traffic across the country. On one occasion we took our dog Clementine to the vet and waited in the car while they examined her inside. On another occasion we pulled into the parking lot and talked to the vet on a cellphone, who sent out a vet tech to examine Clementine who was in our backseat.
Clementine is an anxious dog. She hates being separated from us, especially when she’s away from her familiar territory at home. Besides our regular vet, we also see a veterinary behaviorist who treats Clementine’s anxious behavior. She too was closed to walk-in traffic during Covid. She conducted Clementine’s annual visit over Zoom in the spring of 2020. After that first Zoom annual, she now always meets with Clementine on Zoom. I suspect the vet does that with many of her patients. Everyone is happier with the arrangement, including Clementine.
Monday Links
- Humans living in the Bronze Age used hallucinogens.
- AEI: work requirements for welfare benefits actually work.
- AI is assisting doctors, not replacing them. It produces better diagnoses and helps avoid prescription errors. (WSJ)
- Anti-Covid measures didn’t keep people from getting Covid; but they did almost wipe out the flu. (WSJ)
- Health Affairs study: From 21–61 percent of enrollees in ACA plans paid for preventive services that are supposed to be free.
Saturday Links
- How parents decide when and how to punish their children. It’s similar to the principles of criminal law.
- Reducing carbon emissions through subsidies (the Biden/IRA approach) costs 6 times as much as a carbon tax.
- Why the Medicare Trustees report is too optimistic: It assumes the birth rate in the long-run will increase to a nearly full native replacement of 2.0 children per woman, despite a steady and now long-standing fall to around 1.65.
- 80% of new treatments in the pharmaceutical pipeline originate in the U.S. That’s been a Godsend for the more than 55 million people living with dementia across the globe, the tens of millions worldwide who will receive a cancer diagnosis, and the more than 38 million people living with HIV.
- David Henderson’s proposal to cut Medicare spending: offer beneficiaries cash instead of a benefit in kind. I would offer everyone approved for elective surgery half the DRG rate in cash as an alternative. This is actually how some European countries handle long term care.