- John Cochrane on Liz Truss: She had good ideas, but mismanaged the marketing and the politics.
- Politicizing science: The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour has effectively announced that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups.
- Medicare Advantage Star Ratings: Are too many plans above average?
- Lessons from the lockdown: Charter schools and Catholic schools did better than public schools. (WSJ)
- Between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, the U.S. wasted 82.1 million doses of Covid vaccine. (WSJ)
Category: Public Insurance
Is Aging a Disease? Or is it Merely the Cause of Age-Related Diseases?
As people age their health deteriorates and they become more prone to diseases and chronic conditions. For instance, heart disease kills more Americans than any other ailment. Heart disease is correlated with advanced age. About 80% of deaths from heart disease are age 65 or older.
Cancer too is a disease of old age. Fewer than 25 cancer diagnosis per 100,000 population occurs in people under the age of 20. For those age 45 to 49 the rate of cancer per 100,000 people is 350. Once you reach age 60 cancer rates are triple, with more than 1,000 per 100,000 population.
Surgeon General Believes Toxic Workplaces are a Public Health Hazard (Seriously?)
It seems in recent years that the definition of public health has grown to include a lot of things seemingly unrelated to public health. The age-old definition of public health includes combating infectious disease and communicable illnesses. Covid-19 is definitely something that can be passed around, as is influenza. Attempts to control the spread of deadly pathogens falls well within the area of public health.
FDA Panel Recommends Withdrawing Premature Birth Drug
An advisory panel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted to recommend revoking approval for a synthetic hormone called Makena. Makena is an obstetrics drug administered as a weekly injection to pregnant women at high risk of premature delivery.
An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted Wednesday to take a drug intended to prevent premature births off the market, saying that it remains doubtful that the drug works.
The recommendation, in a 14-1 vote, from the agency’s Obstetrics, Reproductive and Urologic Drugs Advisory Committee closed a three-day meeting on the clinical trial evidence supporting Makena, the only drug approved in the U.S. to prevent preterm births.