On the evening of September 29, 1994 Reginald Green and his wife Margaret were driving on the A3 motorway while vacationing in Southern Italy. Their two young children, 7-year old Nicholas and 4-year old Eleanor, were asleep in the backseat when tragedy struct. Two men thought to be members of the Italian mafia mistook their rental car for one belonging to a jeweler. They followed closely behind Green’s rental car and then pulled alongside. Their faces masked, they shouted at Green in Italian. Green accelerated to get away. When Green didn’t pull over the men fired shots into the back of his rental car striking his son Nicholas in the head. Although mafia violence was not uncommon in Southern Italy the fact that a young boy was killed while vacationing with his family shocked the nation. The police spared no expense hunting down Nicholas’ killers. Francesco Mesiano and Michele Iannello were arrested three days later and ultimately convicted of his murder.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Failing to Save Lives: Why Old Drugs Don’t Get Approved for New Uses
There are literally thousands of old, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs that may have other potential uses besides the conditions for which they were approved. The trouble it: nobody has the profit motive to fully investigate them. Even when there are studies the FDA is suspect. The agency understands there will be little monitoring or follow-up studies reviewing long-term efficacy.
Managed Competition Exposed
You can find competing private health insurance plans with community rated premiums and government sponsored risk adjustment in Belgium, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland – where participation is mandatory. Ireland and Australia have voluntary enrollment, as does Medicare Advantage and the (Obamacare) marketplaces in the United States.
Wokeness Invades the Doctor’s Office
This is Dr. Stanley Goldfarb in the Wall Street Journal:
The National Library of Medicine database shows more than 2,700 recent papers on “racism and medicine,” which generally purport to show physician bias leading to racial disparities in health outcomes. Yet the most commonly cited studies are shoddily designed, ignore such critical factors as pre-existing conditions, or reach predetermined and sensationalized conclusions that aren’t supported by reported results. These papers in turn are used to source even more shoddy research.