Wherever baby boomers have gone they’ve strained institutions. Hospitals were filled to the brim with babies in the post WWII years through 1964. Schools were full and more had to be built. Colleges too were filled to capacity with the huge cohort of Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Nowadays approximately 73 million baby boomers are heading for old age. As boomers passed into late middle-age, they created a Golden Age of Rectums resulting in investors buying the practices of gastroenterologists. Investors are also buying nursing homes, which is a growth industry as boomers age. With a huge cohort of boomers slipping into old age, death is becoming a growth industry. Hospice care practices are being acquired by investors, as is presiding over boomers’ death. A new example appeared in Kaiser Health News and Fortune. Death is anything but a dying business as private equity cashes in on the $23 billion funeral home industry.
Category: Public Insurance
Wednesday Links
- New book: Why people are the ultimate resource.
- Subsidizing kids: Hungary exempts mothers of four or more children from income taxes for life. (The Economist, gated)
- Why do we need an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health? Because the National Institutes of Health is too cautious. (NYT, gated)
- Life expectancy in China surpasses the US.
- Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program is worse than you think.
- The right way to pay tuition for students who need a loan.
Is it a Problem that only 1-in-5 Therapists Accepts Insurance?
Margie Ryerson is a licensed marriage and family therapist. Last week she wrote an article in the online magazine Slate discussing why she does not accept insurance. Ryerson said she has turned away many potential patients telling them she had no appointment openings. Often the real reason was that her practice is closed to those not…
Monday Links
- CRISPR isn’t just for editing human genes. It can be used to increase corn and rice yields by 10%.
- Finally: the masks are coming off in Head Start.
- How would you like to be an inch or so taller? Doctors can oblige you.
- Learning loss was greatest in school districts that remained remote the longest.
- More on Rand Paul v. Anthony Fauci.
- Why its hard to know which drugs work best against Covid.