- If “best practices” in medicine really are best practices, why can’t we just copy them everywhere else?
- Although over 80% of insured adults rate their health insurance as “good” or “excellent,” most have difficulty understanding and using it – especially if they are in fair or poor health.
- Marijuana in Colorado: In Denver there are more than 200 licensed recreational dispensaries alone. There are 700 licensed cultivation sites in the state.
- Are dementia rates falling?
- Should we expand pharmacists’ scope of practice to the full extent of their training, as they did in New Zealand and Canada?
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Wednesday Links
- Study: The global COVID-19 campaign vaccinated over 2 billion people within the first 8 months. We find that the vaccination campaign across 141 countries averted 2.4 million excess deaths, valued at $6.5 trillion.
- Burnout among health care workers: Less than 30 percent are “very happy”; more than a third report symptoms of “depression”; more than half have symptoms of “anxiety.”
- Who makes more money from the sale of generic drugs – PBMs or drug manufacturers?
- How many prescription drugs do people take over their lifetimes? non-Hispanic Whites take the most, Hispanics take the least, and non-Hispanic Blacks fall in between these extremes.
OTC Hearing Aids Approved One Year Ago, No Thanks to the FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally got something right when it finalized rules allowing over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. Only kidding. The FDA can’t take credit for OTC hearing aids. It took the FDA five years after Congress passed legislation in 2017 forcing the FDA to create a category of OTC hearing aids.
Monday Links
- Who delays care because of cost? Only 29% with employer coverage; 37% with Obamacare; 39% with Medicaid and 42% with Medicare.
- Given an average waiting time of 2½ hours before being discharged, how can there be too many emergency care physicians?
- The “surprise billing” solution isn’t working: Only 4% of the roughly 90,000 payment disputes initiated between April and September have been resolved.
- A CMS rule change will lead to $700 million less savings than the CBO estimated when evaluating the act that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices.