HHS, the Treasury Department and the Department of Labor issued proposed rules on Friday that clamp down on short-term limited duration health plans, which offer cheap but sparse coverage that Democrats deride as “junk insurance.” The rule, which is meant to protect consumers and bolster the Obamacare exchange, would overturn a 2018 Trump-era regulation and satisfies liberal lawmakers and patient groups who have demanded the administration act since its first days in the White House.
Category: COVID-19 and Public Health
Thursday Links
- Judge’s free speech ruling was prompted by Fauci’s attempt to silence lockdown critics.
- Outgoing CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warns we should beware of politicized science and misinformation. But, no mea culpa?
- A quarter of all Americans have not yet been infected by Covid.
- AI in health: Who gets paid? Who gets sued? AI has already been used in diagnosing dementia, heart attacks, lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer.
- Prof. Kotlikoff explains the difference between the economist’s approach to personal financial planning and the conventional approach.
- Casey Mulligan study: Biden regulations are costing $10,000 per US household.
Medical Care Credit Cards Benefit Patients and Providers
My wife’s former hair stylist was an immigrant struggling with the loss of income after the Covid lockdown. One day the stylist explained she needed eye surgery she could not afford. My wife told her about CareCredit, a company that provides consumer credit for medical care and veterinary care. The next time they met the stylist thanked her. She had scheduled her eye surgery after getting approved by CareCredit. The stylist said she would have up to a year to pay off her surgery interest free.
The anecdote may sound like a story with a happy ending but not according to Senator Elizabeth Warren and some of her Democratic colleagues.
Monday Links
- 93% of cancer centers report a shortage of carboplatin and 70% report shortages for cisplatin.
- Up to 500,000 U.S. cancer patients could be at risk of having their treatment disrupted. (WSJ)
- WHO is about to declare that Aspartame, a common artificial sweetener, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The back and forth on this issue never seems to end.
- Expected lifetime out-of-pocket spending by Medicare enrollees: $157,500 (Fidelity) to $197,000 (Employee Benefit Research Institute). (NYT)
- A single year with a grossly ineffective teacher can cost a classroom of students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings. Yet it can take 10 years and $250,000 to $450,000 to fire a lousy California teacher, and fewer than 0.002% are dismissed for unprofessional conduct or poor performance. (WSJ)