Much of the news from the last few weeks has been about Covid, the Delta version, the Delta versions impact on the unvaccinated, and the lack of resources to care for those with Covid. Medical resource capacity is very low in some states. Hospitals are shipping patients to other cities and or states for care at a great expense. Practicing your individual rights in the United States is protected mostly for White Americans and complained about if others of a different ethnicity, color, gender, etc. practice similar. What many practicing those rights during this pandemic forget is the practice of such rights shall not infringe upon the rights of others. Those practicing such claims do not care. Biden Plans to Tie Vaccines for Nursing Home Staff to
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Much of the news from the last few weeks has been about Covid, the Delta version, the Delta versions impact on the unvaccinated, and the lack of resources to care for those with Covid. Medical resource capacity is very low in some states. Hospitals are shipping patients to other cities and or states for care at a great expense.
Practicing your individual rights in the United States is protected mostly for White Americans and complained about if others of a different ethnicity, color, gender, etc. practice similar. What many practicing those rights during this pandemic forget is the practice of such rights shall not infringe upon the rights of others. Those practicing such claims do not care.
Biden Plans to Tie Vaccines for Nursing Home Staff to Fed Funding (medscape.com)
President Joe Biden intends to use the financial clout of Medicare and Medicaid to require that the staff of US nursing homes get COVID-19 vaccines, with plans to release a formal plan for this mandate next month.
A press release issued Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) didn’t offer specific details on how such a mandate would work, such as intended fines or penalties or potential thresholds for withholding federal payment.
As one critic said “Focusing only on nursing homes will cause vaccine-hesitant workers to flee to other healthcare providers and leave many centers without adequate staff to care for residents.” There is already a shortage
Lacking Beds, Hospitals Ship COVID-19 Patients to Other States (medscape.com)
Hospitals in several states are full of COVID-19 patients and no longer have beds available, so they’re sending patients to other states for treatment — sometimes hundreds of miles away on ambulances, helicopters and planes, according to The Associated Press.
More than 85,000 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized across the U.S., according to the latest data from The New York Times. Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oregon hit record-high levels for COVID-19 hospitalizations during the past week, and Alabama ran out of intensive care unit beds on Wednesday, the newspaper reported.
Keeping people out of hospitals during a pandemic has been difficult until vaccines were put into play. Much of today’s issue is the result of too few being vaccinated and resisting vaccination.
Biden Administration Takes Further Action to End Barriers to Medicaid Coverage – Center For Children and Families (georgetown.edu)
Nearly six months ago, the Biden Administration initiated efforts to withdraw work reporting requirements in the eleven states with approved section 1115 Medicaid waivers. Now, the resolution many have been waiting for is almost entirely complete.
On August 10, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah all received letters from CMS formally withdrawing their work requirement waivers. The recissions of the work requirement in South Carolina’s “Palmetto Pathways to Independence” and Utah’s “Primary Care Network” demonstration withdrew the specific waiver authorizing the states to impose the requirements. In the case of Ohio and South Carolina’s second 1115 demonstration “Healthy Connections Works” though, CMS withdrew the states’ demonstrations in their entirety since the demonstrations only included the authority to impose work requirements.
We still need to end the Medicaid requirement of paying for the care received from Medicaid. Most people do not have resource to do so which is why they use Medicaid in the first place. Medicaid grants access to healthcare and Long Term Care to those who have neither with the agreement to sign over all resources and assists for the care.
We do need a resource for Long Term Care which would have occurred if Ted Kennedy had not died.
No Physicians Disciplined for COVID Falsehoods | MedPage Today
Despite a national call to sanction doctors who spread COVID-19 misinformation, a MedPage Today investigation found not one of 20 physicians who’ve peddled such falsehoods has been disciplined by their state licensing agency for doing so.
In spite of complaints being filed, the investigations haven’t been launched. These elements are confidential in most states, including the 10 contacted by MedPage Today who license the physicians.
This means physicians who have advanced false COVID information — including Simone Gold, MD, JD; Scott Atlas, MD; Joseph Mercola, DO; Lee Merritt, MD; Sherri Tenpenny, DO; and Stella Immanuel, MD — are free to continue to misinform their patients and the public, even as the Delta variant surges.
Fraudulent claims and fallacies by medical personnel.
With no beds, hospitals ship patients to far-off cities | Modern Healthcare
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Many overwhelmed hospitals, with no beds to offer, are putting critically ill COVID-19 patients on planes, helicopters and ambulances and sending them hundreds of miles to far-flung states for treatment.
The surge in the delta variant of the virus, combined with low vaccination rates, has pushed hospitals to the brink in many states and resulted in a desperate scramble to find beds for patients.
The issue is that large hospitals in urban areas already were running short of space and staff with non-COVID procedures like cancer biopsies and hip replacements when the summer surge started. That means they have very few free beds to offer to patients from small rural hospitals without ICUs or from medical centers in virus hotspots.
More of the same on the lack of resource to treat Covid in unvaccinated people.
Pharmacist Charged for Vax Card Sales; Moderna Recipe Fight; Drug Waste Report COIs | MedPage Today
A Chicago pharmacist was arrested for allegedly selling dozens of COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay, according to the Department of Justice.
Tangtang Zhao, 34, sold 125 authentic CDC vaccination cards to 11 different buyers for about $10 per card in March and April of 2021, the DOJ said.
More Fraud and lies by people we trust and who should know better
Is the Hospital Price Transparency Rule Actually Lowering Costs? | MedPage Today
In 2019, the U.S. spent $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per capita on healthcare, about 18% of the gross domestic product. The affordability of hospital care, which accounts for the largest share of healthcare spending (31% or $1.2 trillion), has significant public interest implications. The lack of hospital price transparency has been considered to be an important factor that compromises hospital care price competition and care affordability.
Comparing Complication Rates After Elective Total Knee Arthroplasty Delivered Or Purchased By The VA | Health Affairs
Veterans frequently face decisions about which services should be delivered versus purchased by the VA. Comparisons of quality across settings are essential if veterans are to receive care that is consistently accessible, patient centered, effective, and safe. We compared risk-adjusted major postoperative complication rates for total knee arthroplasties that were delivered in VA facilities versus purchased from community providers. Overall, adjusted complication rates were significantly lower for arthroplasties delivered by the VA compared with those that were purchased. However, hospital-level comparisons revealed five locations where VA-purchased care outperformed VA-delivered care. As the amount of VA-purchased care continues to increase under the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 and the VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018, these results support VA monitoring of overall and local comparative hospital performance to improve the quality of the care that the VA delivers while ensuring optimal outcomes in VA-purchased care.
In most cases, the VA still out performs commercial healthcare and does it at a lower cost. Yet, politicians cut funding to it and push more veterans to commercial healthcare. If Medicare used the VA formulary, it would be saving $billions. There was a move afoot to do so.
Vaccinations Against COVID-19 May Have Averted Up To 140,000 Deaths In The United States | Health Affairs
We assessed the association between US state-level vaccination rates and COVID-19 deaths during the first five months of vaccine availability. We estimated that by May 9, 2021, the US vaccination campaign was associated with a reduction of 139,393 COVID-19 deaths. The association varied in different states. In New York, for example, vaccinations led to an estimated 11.7 fewer COVID-19 deaths per 10,000, whereas Hawaii observed the smallest reduction, with an estimated 1.1 fewer deaths per 10,000. Overall, our analysis suggests that the early COVID-19 vaccination campaign was associated with reductions in COVID-19 deaths. As of May 9, 2021, reductions in COVID-19 deaths associated with vaccines had translated to value of statistical life benefit ranging between $625 billion and $1.4 trillion.
The plus side of early vaccinations.
Mississippi’s Hospital System Is Rapidly Approaching Statewide Failure | The New Yorker
On Wednesday, Alan Jones, a senior administrator at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, announced that the state’s hospital system is approaching the “nightmare” that officials have “feared the most . . . total failure.” He said,
“Within the next five to seven to ten days, I think we’re gonna see failure of the hospital system in Mississippi. I mean, hospitals are full from Memphis to Gulfport, Natchez to Meridian. Everything is full.”
Owing to a shortage of both beds and staff, hospitals will be unable to treat not just covid-19
More detail about the impact of the unvaccinated on medical resources.