If you must know in order to understand why I would post this, I am a Vietnam era veteran. I use the VA healthcare system. I find the VA to be a valuable entity for all veterans. It goes beyond healthcare and provides help for education, buying a home, and other valuable services which would be costly to us if privatized. All of this I have used and found it to be valuable. American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein frequently...
Read More »A Pittance Offered Up for National PFAS Cleanup
What is being offered up by 3M, etc. (NYT article below) is a pittance of what will be necessary to clean up lakes, wetlands associated with the lakes, rivers, and streams. I lived in Michigan. The reported contamination from PFAS, etc. there is massive and then there is a potential Lake Erie cleanup, the Niagara River, and into Lake Ontario. You can fish in Michigan lakes, etc. but they are advising not to eat the fish. Also areas near air force...
Read More »Corporate Healthcare being Handed ‘Get Out of Jail Free Cards’
Much like Kip Sullivan in Minnesota/PNHP who Angry Bear has featured, Kay Tillow of Kentucky is a Single Payer activist. You will find Kip saying similar things about Medicare Advantage, etc. And we are all a little bit different attempting to reach the same goals . . . preventing the privatization of Medicare and achieving Single Payer. Kay’s article appeared on Common Dreams. I have added some things to her article and emphasized some points I...
Read More »Irrigation efficiency for who?
I live halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. Pretty much what you would call desert if you were new to the area like I am. Water is an issue as much of it comes from the Colorado river. The limits to draw water from the Colorado are still being determined or in a flux. The states are jockeying for more to insure growth. Nothing is stopping our small city from issuing more building permits. Irrigation efficiency for who? – The one-handed economist,...
Read More »Pharma and Chamber of Commerce Suing to Stop Drug Negotiations
Big business organization in the form of the Chamber of Commerce and a Phamaceutical company are joining together and taking on the government to keep it from negotiating pharmaceutical pricing. Chances are well in favor of this ending up in SCOTUS based upon a moneyed corporation willing to spend its way into court. A resource Gideon Wainwright did not have. Those doors have mostly closed for citizens. And today, we have states lacking...
Read More »CMS and CBO consistently overestimated the growth in health care spending
National Health Expenditure Projections, 2022–31: Growth To Stabilize Once The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Ends, Health Affairs, National health expenditures are projected to have grown 4.3 percent in 2022, slower than nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9.2 percent, leading to a decrease in the projected health spending share of GDP from 18.3 percent in 2021 to 17.4 percent in 2022.1 However, over the course of the full...
Read More »Rehab Scam in the State of Arizona
The magnitude of this healthcare scam is troubling. How could it go on for a period of time it did? It is apparent the state agency in charge of contracting did not follow up on these facilities for reasons unknown at this time. And i was easy to ignore due to the ethnicity of the people targeted. The state contracts with private and non-profit managed care organizations (MCOs) who are the health insurance providers for Medicaid beneficiaries. The...
Read More »“This is the golden age of drug discovery”
This commentary came by way of ltr a reader at Angry Bear. A pretty solid review of how drug prices and the resulting costs after insurance are still impossible to pay. That is, if the insurance, Medicare, Medicaid even pay for them in entirety or a portion. If the former is not the case, a patient is left with what they will not pay. Then there is the yearly deductibles and co-pays. Some will decide not to take these potentially life-saving...
Read More »A Better Way (Potentially) to Fund Rural Hospitals
The issues being addressed in the second part of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform or CHQPR ORG, report reviews what is causing small rural hospitals to close. Provided is also glimpse at a solution to fix and maintain small rural hospitals which can not maintain the necessary facility and service to local patients on their own. This is a patient-focused approach using a funding scheme designed to support the services patients...
Read More »Primary Care Takeover by Commercial Interests
It appears Primary Care is becoming a hot market practice for nonhealthcare US retail and healthcare corporations to invest in today. Big corporations are chasing the Primary Care market worth about $260 billion in 2022, which is big enough to attract attention. The other factor is a shift from FFS healthcare model to a Fee For Value healthcare model. There is a potential for increasing costs in the latter. Primary care disruptors could capture...
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