Tag Archives: Healthcare

Brad DeLong got a huge amount of attention by saying it was time for neoliberals such as Brad DeLong to pass the baton to those to their left. Alarmingly, he seems to have written this first on twitter. Zach Beuchamp rescued it from tawdry twitter to now very respectable blogosphere with an interview. One interesting aspect is that Brad has very little criticism of 90s era Brad’s policy proposals. Basically, the argument is that Democrats must stick...

In parts of Livingston and Oakland counties, the people have been warned not to eat the fish from the Huron River and Kent, Strawberry, Zukey, Gallagher, Loon, Whitewood, Base Line and Portage lakes as well as Hubbell Pond due to the fish being contaminated with PFAS and similar chemicals coming from industries. In 2016, Michigan started to tell people about the impact of PFAS and how dangerous the PFAS and PFOAs are. PFAS/PFOA are part of a class of...

“The Pentagon is planning to tap $1 billion in leftover funds from military pay and pension accounts to help President Donald Trump pay for his long-sought border wall, a top Senate Democrat said Thursday. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL ‘It’s coming out of military pay and pensions. $1 billion. That’s the plan. The funds are available because Army recruitment is down and a voluntary early military retirement program is being underutilized.’ The development comes...

This should come as no surprise as I have written on the topic of Healthcare Costs and Its Drivers before. In particular, the overriding statistic from an earlier post was 50% of the increase in healthcare costs was due solely to price increases between 1996 and 2013 (JAMA, Factors Associated With . . . . Adjusting for inflation, “annual health care spending on inpatient, ambulatory, retail pharmaceutical, nursing facility, emergency department, and...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) The Ethics of Clinical Trials In a clinical trial the therapy is decided by a pseudo random number generator. How can this be ethical ? People are treated differently for no reason related to different interests different values and priorities or even different merit (assuming merit can differ).There is a utilitarian rational for clinical trials. Through such trials doctors learn, and that knowledge is...

Massachusetts ACA Enrollment Exceeds Last Year, Charles Gaba, ACA Signups Blog Massachusetts: (January 14, 2018) saw an increased 285,000 signups for healthcare for 2019 which is up 6.6% YOY and with 9 days left until the ACA signup deadline. This comes even though Republicans and Trump have been sabotaging the ACA. Even more impressive, 97.2% (90% National Average) of enrollees have paid their 1st month fees. Republicans and Trump Implement the CSR...

In a clinical trial the therapy is decided by a pseudo random number generator. How can this be ethical ? People are treated differently for no reason related to different interests different values and priorities or even different merit (assuming merit can differ). There is a utilitarian rational for clinical trials. Through such trials doctors learn, and that knowledge is useful to future patients. But this rationale is utterly rejected as ethically...

In The New York Times Abby Goodnough wrote” she got a Vivitrol (naltrexone) shot but it was so expensive — her co-payment was $600 — that she never got another” !!! This is insane. Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist. It prevents opioids from causing a high (and relieving pain and suppressing coughing and breathing). In no way is it conceivably a drug of abuse. But opioid addicts who wish to cut off all effects of opioids have to pay for their...

To add to Robert Waldman’s post on ACA enrollment, here is the chart as taken from Andrew Sprung’s Blog (Expostfactoid) on the ACA. This is data Charles Gaba had gathered and Andrew rearranged. Note non-expansion Medicaid states did better than expansion states in enrollment. Why is that true? The states marked in yellow on the left are expansion states. Without getting into the data and explaining Andrew’s findings, it is interesting the difference in...

American Journal of Public Health: “The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End-of-Life Care” December 2015, Melissa D. Aldridge, PhD, MBA and Amy S. Kelley, MD, MSHS There has been a lot of talk and presentation on End of Life care and its high costs. “The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End of Life Care” reviews those costs and expands the topic beyond End of Life to all the population with chronic conditions and functional limitations. FIGURE 1Estimated...