- Tax Policy Center: 43 percent of married couples pay more in taxes (averaging $2,064) for being married; another 43 percent pay less (averaging $3,062). Black couples are more likely to pay more.
- Is ice cream healthy for you?
- Woke health: NY The planning to require a “health equity assessment” opening a new facility or slashing or consolidating existing services.
- Doctors got bonuses to give patients the Covid vaccine.
- Why we have crime: the average person sent to jail in 2014 had 10.3 previous arrests (median 8) and 4.3 previous convictions (median 3)!
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Saturday Links
- Letting nurses do more stuff is good for patients.
- 434 economists (including yours truly) criticize the Biden budget.
- Is the Food Stamp program contributing to America’s poor health?
- Biden: DACA kids should get free health care from Medicaid, CHIP and the ACA exchanges. Won’t that encourage more DACA kids?
- The FDA approves some drugs other nations don’t want.
- Study: After St. George’s Hospital in The UK ended its mask mandate for staff and visitors for some, but not all, wards, there was no difference in Covid infections between the two settings.
- Meta analysis of 2,168 studies finds that wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic led to negative health consequences, including itching, headaches, and restriction of oxygen.
Friday Links
- Antos: Against Medicare coverage for hearing aids.
- 58% of Payers Use Outcomes-Based Contracts for Prescription Drugs
- In the US, 85-90% of people who have sudden cardiac arrests do not survive. A home defibrillator cost $1,000. (NYT)
- Michael Milken: “We can now reasonably speculate about therapies that will give us the ability to clean tiny cancers from our bodies as routinely as dentists clean our teeth.”
- How Medicaid regulates drug prices.
Withdrawal Pains: Covid Welfare State is Disbanding
In the early, panicked days of the pandemic, the United States government did something that was previously unimaginable. It transformed itself, within weeks, into something akin to a European-style welfare state.