Tag Archives: Healthcare

Coronavirus dashboard for October 21: the autumn lull continues, despite new subvariants  – by New Deal democrat No economic data today, so let’s update the status of COVID-19. We are currently in a relative lull, with confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths all near or at low levels only matched or exceeded at mid-year 2021 and early spring of this year. Here is the 6 month view of confirmed cases and deaths: At the moment...

The usual mix of articles on the internet. The important ones are healthcare and legal issues. The usual legal issues going on with trump who is flinging as much mud against the wall to confuse the issue of his attack on the US. Eventually, this will come to an end. Hopefully, there is an end where trump is prosecuted to the fullest extent he can be . . , jail. Jail, even if it is for one year. The other big issue I am seeing is commercial...

A good article on hospital increasing healthcare costs, due to consolidations, supplies, and the associated hospital operational management. The article also engages in a book review of Big Med by David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns (“Megaproviders and the High Cost of Health Care in America“). I will have to check the book out and advise later. Towards the end of the article, Shannon has included elements of Single Payer in her review-critique...

Introduction: FFS Medicare Overhead costs are ~2%. Medicare Advantage overhead costs are far higher. The same can be said for commercial healthcare costs paid by insurance companies. Neither MA administered healthcare or commercial insurance plans can compete with FFS Medicare for costs and care. I will touch on a few reasons why on Medicare at the end of this article which came by way of Dale Coberly, the resident expert of today’s SS. As...

Latest mixed bag of articles for the week touching on many topics. The very first article implies there was a grant to the Wuhan, China facility. Not sure why that would occur considering all the ruckus which occurred in the past. There is also an article on the Jacksom Mississippi water issues. Jackson is a fair size town. Kind of wonder why that is even occurring. There is also an article about the Boy Scouts selling off their land to pay for...

Having read at various blogs, I found “annieasksyou” to be interesting and covering a topic in economics for which I have limited bandwidth. It is definitely beyond AB’s version of economics and numbers. I think you will also find annie’s words to be interesting. If you visit her site, be polite. Although Annie is also a polite person, she is a no-nonsense person too. The topic today? Abortion and the right for women to decide. “Abortion Is...

Some seem to think so. A recent paper by Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, and Jason L. Schwartz appears to backup this claim up with some numbers exclusively of their own. “Excess Covid Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” NBER, © 2022 by Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, and Jason L. Schwartz “Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that...

Coronavirus dashboard for October 5: An autumn lull as COVID-19 evolves towards seasonal endemicity  – by New Deal democrat Back in August I highlighted some epidemiological work by Trevor Bedford about what endemic COVID is likely to look like, based on the rate of mutations and the period of time that previous infection makes a recovered person resistant to re-infection. Here’s his graph: He indicated that it “illustrate[s] a scenario...

As you can see bullet spewing weapons takes the lead this week. There are a lot of articles as taken from JAMA Network. which also has more and unlisted here. You are probably also wondering why the term “bullet spewing weapons” verbiage. There was always a discussion on semi-automatic, automatic, revolvers, etc. So, I cut to the chase. We are talking about weapons which spew bullets. Hence the name. Everything else is a mixture of various topics...

Medicare Advantage (Part C) plans were to be the private plans able to deliver more and better healthcare than FFS Medicare. MA plans does offer more services than FFS Medicare. It offers similar services at a higher cost than ordinary Medicare costs. This is accomplished by over coding healthcare issues of participants which in turn increases prices to FFS Medicare. Random surveys over the years have revealed excessive charges by Medicare...