Tag Archives: Healthcare

Adding where Joel paused . . . Can you reduce your risk of dementia? – Angry Bear, Joel Eissenberg Replacing red meat cuts dementia risk by 20%, CNN, by Sandee LaMotte Dementia risk rose by 14% when people ate about 1 ounce of processed red meat a day — the equivalent of slightly less than two 3-ounce servings a week — compared with people who only ate about three servings a month, a preliminary new study found. The risk for dementia dropped...

On 1 July, I retired from my 37-year faculty gig. Among other things, this meant shifting from private insurance to Medicare. I haven’t yet used my Medicare coverage, but my wife, who retired two years ago as a faculty at a different university, has had no difficulties with her transition to Medicare. So far.The Medicare Conversion Factor (the multiplier used to calculate payment rates for each service or procedure) for 2025 will be the lowest since...

More on Pharmacy Benefit Managers and their influence on costs In case you forgot who the PBMs are? The FTC said in its interim report, the “increasing vertical integration and concentration enables the six largest PBMs to manage nearly 95 percent of all prescriptions filled in the United States.” Those six are Caremark Rx, LLC; Express Scripts, Inc.; OptumRx, Inc.; Humana Pharmacy Solutions, Inc.; Prime Therapeutics LLC; and MedImpact...

I am a veteran and like other veterans we try to use the VA. Recently I have been conversing (emails) with Steve Early and explaining to him I was finally taken in by the VA. And why? I spent over 2+ years of time at Camp Lejeune while going back and forth to Cuba for 4.5 months each time. So, I qualify under the recent Pact Act. I and others were showering in tainted water and drinking it. I have a blood disorder in which my platelets disappear and...

I believe most people will ignore this headline. They will do so because it is not as obvious to them as smoke from a fire or smog in the cities. They begin to notice (still not see) the impact of it when they are coughing, sneezing, breathing is labored, etc. At that point, it is a matter of time with your health. Particulate pollution Is Worse Then We Knew and Is Damaging ‘Every Organ in the Body’ by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront! Recent...

Dementia is becoming a growing societal burden throughout the world, especially in the industrialized world where increase longevity results in larger numbers of people experiencing dementia. So far, advances in medical treatments to mitigate this burden have been modest, at best.There are known genetic risk factors for Alzheimers and frontotemporal lobe dementia. I’ve had my genome sequenced and I have none of the currently recognized variants...

Why You Might Be Responsible For Paying Your Parents’ Medical Debts, by Kelly Phillips Forbes In her five years as a Democratic member of Pennsylvania’s State House, Kristine Howard has fought for gun control, abortion rights, environmental protections and greater funding for public education. But this year, after the death of a colleague, Anthony M. DeLuca Sr., she took up his decade-long crusade to change an obscure state law under the...

A follow-up to the much longer report on Insulin (test on this later) and how PBMs impact pricing on other drugs. “Insulin A Drug Pricing Analysis,” Angry Bear. “Drug manufacturers alone set and raise drug prices, and PBMs are holding drug companies accountable by negotiating the lowest possible cost for drugs, including insulins, on behalf of patients.“ According to 46brooklyn, this is an overly simplistic view on drug pricing. It should be...

Another add-on from yesterday as to why people should take precautionary actions when confronted with a pandemic such as Covid-19, the flu, or other contagions. There was much resistance to taking precautionary measures under the guise of a freedom to do what they wish to do mentality. Thousands of people paid with their lives after contracting Covid-19. Many of them decided they did not need to take any precautionary actions. Masks, social...

The most economically consequential event of the past decade was the COVID pandemic. It saw countless heroic actions that will be forever unrecognized. Among those who were recognized were Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines. A more controversial figure during that period was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH Institute of Allergy and...