- People are waiting almost four weeks to see a doctor.
- Biased poll: Americans give the health care system an “F”.
- One reason for the labor shortage: 300,000 people of working age died of Covid and another 1.9 million are believed to have gotten long Covid. That adds up to 18% of unfilled jobs.
- A giant fern has twice as many nucleotide base pairs and three times as many chromosomes as humans do. (NYT, gated)
- An unusual jellyfish can live forever.
Category: Health Reform
Biden Announces Cancer Moonshot but Shoots America in Foot
On Monday President Biden announced a Cancer Moonshot. The speech was delivered on the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s speech announcing his proposal to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to Earth. The Cancer Moonshot speech was delivered at the Kennedy Library in Boston. Leaning into the symbolism of President John F. Kennedy’s…
Another Argument against Medicare for All
From my latest column at Forbes:
Consider the effect of having one insurer cover drugs, while the other two are covering medical care. If a diabetic skips his insulin and other medications, that is actually profitable for the drug insurer – since these are expenses it doesn’t have to cover. However, if such non-adherence to a drug regimen leads to emergency room visits and hospitalization, those are costs the other two insurers will have to bear.
Americans Boozed it Up During the Lockdown and Never Stopped
During the pandemic Americans were stuck at home with little social outlet and apparently boozed it up to relieve the stress of Covid, according to an article in The New York Times. Or maybe they thought alcohol taken internally was a good sanitizer for Covid.
Alcohol tax revenues collected by the U.S. Treasury Department rose by eight percent in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2021, compared with the previous year, and remain well above pre-pandemic levels.