Little Good can Come from Private Equity in the Healthcare Industry, Angry Bear Two Years ago As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) and the VA with commercial healthcare insurance and/or Medicare Advantage and ACOs? Commercial Healthcare Insurance and Medicare...
Read More »What Happens When a Safety Net Hospital Closes?
Much of this article I rewrote to make it clearer for the reader. It is written by upper management. I do disagree with the conclusions. Throwing more money at healthcare is not going to solve the issues he discusses. The article praises Commercial Healthcare Insurance who pay more for patient care and whose costs are twice Medicare of which much is administrative cost. The issue is not Medicare or Medicare. The issue is the cost of the...
Read More »Living poor and dying young
Gooz News is another substack I have taken to reading. Like “Letters from an American,” it too is well written. Except Gooz News concentrates on healthcare a topic which I have interest in talking about. Being poor results in being exposed to many factors all of which impact your life and that of your family. As Merrill Gooz points out, the nation is wealthy and could easily remove much of the impact of poverty on the health of those who can not...
Read More »Expanding Medicaid to people in prison
XCons have a tough enough time adjusting to the outside without being denied access to healthcare. It is an adjustment period, they have little power, and they are taken advantage of once released from prison. Denial of healthcare is just another issue on top of all the other issues they face when getting back into society. Why states should change Medicaid rules to cover people leaving prison, Prison Policy Initiative, Emily Widra. The gap in...
Read More »FTC and Congress Put PBMs on Notice
FTC and Congress Put PBMs on Notice – AAF (americanactionforum.org) The conclusion of the Congressional Plan Much of this post in a copy and past. However, the conclusion is mostly mine. I am starting out with the conclusions and actions of Congress to which the author claims could result in fewer PBMs and increasing prices. If you look at Figure Two, it becomes rather obvious where the fallout is going to be. The smaller PBMs will not be...
Read More »Testimony of Kip Sullivan, on behalf of Health Care for All Minnesota
I used to think Minnesota was a pretty cool state. Spent some time in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. Great experience for a 15 year old. After reading this, I find Minnesota to be just as backwards as Wisconsin is outside of Madison and Milwaukee. Great place to roam and bad politics. I know it is tough to get many to read beyond a couple of paragraphs. This post documents Kip Sullivan’s testimony to the Minnesota Health and...
Read More »Financialism
Back before, municipal and state governments, pension funds, etc. mostly invested in financials of the manufacturing sort. Then, America was in the manufacturing business. An issuing manufacturer was contractually bound to hand over the return owed. The investors were entitled. If they didn’t get their entitle, it was, ‘”see you in court.” In 2023, in Biden v. Nebraska, six states are arguing that Biden’s proposed cancellation of certain student loan...
Read More »April 14, 2023, Letters from an American . . . the Fentanyl Epidemic
The last few days, I have been pointing to the Opioid epidemic which did not just start with Fentanyl. It has been ongoing before the introduction of Qxycontin by the Sadler’s Purdue Pharmaceuticals. In 1996. It was advertised by Purdue as a nonaddictive drug by misquoting Doctors Jane Porter and Herschel Jick’s letter to NEJM about their findings during a Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program at Boston University Medical Center, Waltham,...
Read More »The Economic Toll of the Opioid Crisis Reached Nearly $1.5 Trillion in 2020
The other day I posted some charts covering drug addiction. in the US. The first Bar Chart below matches up with Figure 3 in that post “Drug Overdose Death Rates in the US,” Angry Bear. Today’s post as taken from the Senate Joint Economic Committee fleshes out the numbers cited there and also here in the first chart below. It was more than just people catching Covid. There was a significant increase in the numbers of US citizens inflicted with Opioid...
Read More »Privatized Medicaid and MinnesotaCare
Kip Sullivan has been comparing Fee for Service Medicare to Medicare Advantage and Commercial Healthcare Insurance at length calling out the failures of the latter. The results of such comparisons show FFS Medicare is far less costly in providing similar and better healthcare. Expanding Medicare to include all constituents as it is or in a Single Payer format would lower costs and provide better healthcare to all constituents. The “if” here is...
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