Many professions require lifelong learning to stay up to speed. At the same time, work experience is a valuable part of lifelong learning. I have heard middle-age tech workers complain of ageism, claiming they are laid off ahead of younger colleagues due to their age and higher pay. Likewise, I’ve heard older tech workers say…
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
Should You Brownbag Your Own Hospital Drugs?
Everyone probably knows what brown bagging is. That’s when you pack a sandwich in a brown paper bag and take it to work rather than joining your spendthrift colleagues, when they go out for lunch or order takeout. Sometimes it saves you the time of going out to eat but mostly it saves you the expense of a meal prepared by a restaurant. A sandwich, an apple and a container of yogurt that costs you less than $2 to pack at home substitutes for a $12 takeout meal. In the hospital industry the practice of brown bagging is called white bagging. That is when your insurance company refuses to pay the hospital’s 600% markup for costly oncology drugs and has them delivered to the hospital for patients’ infusions (or patient picks them up at the specialty pharmacy)
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.
What the Medical Schools Get Wrong About Affirmative Action
It took no time at all for establishment medicine to react to the Supreme Court ruling that race-based admissions were unconstitutional. “Today’s decision demonstrates a lack of understanding of the critical benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in educational settings and a failure to recognize the urgent need to address health inequities in our country,” said a statement Association of American Medical Colleges. “We need more health workers, especially those who look like and share the experiences of the people they serve,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
See Medical Schools Denounce Affirmative Action Ruling