Should Medicare (and other health plans for that matter) be required to cover every drug, every hyper expensive medical procedure and every therapy that holds a modicum of benefits? Asked another way, should some types of rationing be allowed?
Category: Health Insurance
Saturday Links
- “The projected $4.7 billion spent on migrant services in FY 2025 either eclipses or approximates what New York City will spend on core public services such as sanitation and the fire department.”
- Organ transplants: “While most organs are delivered successfully, some organs are delayed in transit, lose viability, and have to be thrown away. Some just get lost, too.”
- What’s wrong with the IRA bill: “Electricity prices have skyrocketed by 30% since 2021, rising 13 times faster than in the previous seven years. Meanwhile, gas prices have more than doubled since Biden took office. Rising energy costs have also been a major driver of food inflation, forcing Americans to spend over 11% of their disposable income on food—the highest percentage in three decades.” (Recommended)
- More than four years since the advent of Covid, public authorities keep pushing health practices contrary to medical and scientific knowledge.
- Goldman Sachs estimates that taxpayers will shell out a staggering $1.2 trillion—over three times the initial prediction—to fund the IRA’s green energy subsidies.
- Biden exaggerates the benefit of price negotiations for 10 drugs: “overall numbers tied to the amount Medicare actually pays for drugs that show discounts of roughly 22% on the 10 drugs collectively, compared to what the program paid last year. That’s more modest than the exaggerated discounts based on list prices that show price reductions of up to 79%.” And patients only pay a small fraction of the 22%. (STAT: gated)
- Charles River Laboratories, a top research contractor that helps drug makers with clinical trials, warns that pharmaceutical companies are slashing research and development owing to the IRA’s drug price controls. (WSJ)
JAMA: What Are Older Voters’ Biggest Health Issues? Mostly Cost
What are older Americans’ top health concerns? They are not necessarily what you would expect. The biggest concern of Americans aged 50 and above is the cost of long-term care (56.3%). That is followed closely by the cost of medical care (56.2%), the cost of drugs (54.3%), the cost of health insurance or Medicare (52.1%) and the cost of dental care (44.6%). The only surprise is that the proportions of voters concerned about costs were not higher.
Thursday Links
- Why do GLP-1 receptor agonist medications (e.g., Ozempic) — already FDA-approved to treat diabetes and obesity – appear to cure almost all diseases?
- Research finds they’re effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, and drug addiction.
- The upside of having fewer children: “When birth rates go down, societies often invest more in education and training for each child. This means that even with fewer people, you end up with a workforce more capable of coming up with new ideas and technologies.”
- Mental health therapists in Chicago are being blacklisted if they are “Zionists.”
- Is the White House physician covering up Biden’s mental decline?
- The IRA bill will make the heavily flawed 340B program even worse.