- 93% of cancer centers report a shortage of carboplatin and 70% report shortages for cisplatin.
- Up to 500,000 U.S. cancer patients could be at risk of having their treatment disrupted. (WSJ)
- WHO is about to declare that Aspartame, a common artificial sweetener, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The back and forth on this issue never seems to end.
- Expected lifetime out-of-pocket spending by Medicare enrollees: $157,500 (Fidelity) to $197,000 (Employee Benefit Research Institute). (NYT)
- A single year with a grossly ineffective teacher can cost a classroom of students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings. Yet it can take 10 years and $250,000 to $450,000 to fire a lousy California teacher, and fewer than 0.002% are dismissed for unprofessional conduct or poor performance. (WSJ)
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Friday Links
- NPR: $142,938 in medical costs for a young camper’s snakebite.
- Robert Graboyes tells the rest of the story: the family paid none of the bill.
- CBO: Over the next 30 years, federal spending averages 25.7 percent of GDP while revenues average 18.4 percent of GDP.
- Green madness: You’d have to burn a pizza stove 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry’s private jet.
- Drug shortages explained: Over time, price and margin erosion lead to essential medicines becoming low-margin commodities, and eventual production and supply issues create vulnerability to shortages and susceptibility to low reinvestment.
- Medicaid managed care explained: Enrollment in the lowest-spending plan reduces spending by at least 25 percent [but] rather than reducing “wasteful” spending, lower-spending plans broadly reduce medical service provision— including the provision of low-cost, high-value care—and worsen beneficiary satisfaction and health.
Monday Links
- New diabetic wonder drugs come from two ugly predators: Angler fish and Gila monsters. (NYT)
- Tyler Cowen on the lab leak. (Should we hope it’s true?)
- Casey Mulligan on the household burden of green policies: a poor household pays almost 9% of its income to pay for green policies whereas the rich pay 1.5%.
- Dr. Marty Makary: Ten reasons why we know Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab.
- AMA: BMI standards are racist.
Saturday Links
- Milliman: the average family of four with employer-sponsored health insurance will pay—directly and indirectly—$31,065 in health costs in 2023.
- Alzheimer’s drugs: “the ability to slow cognitive decline by a small but significant margin may not translate into a noticeable day-to-day difference for patients … at a price of $26,500 annually.”
- American Compass founder Oren Cass on living standards decline: “Whereas 40 weeks of the typical male worker’s income in 1985 could provide the middle-class essentials for a family of four, by 2022 he needed 62 weeks of income—a problem, there being only 52 weeks in a year.”
- AEI response: “While Cass’ estimates imply that cost-adjusted earnings have fallen by 36 percent, when we apply conventional inflation adjustment to median weekly earnings and look at all full-time workers, we find an increase of 33 percent before taxes and 53 percent after taxes.”
- Is the exercise equipment industry one big scam?
- Scott Sumners: the Covid lab leak theory has not been confirmed.