Tag Archives: Healthcare

Charles Gaba is doing another update on Covid death rates taking into consideration Partisanship and vaccination rate. At the bottom I include his last update if you wanted to compare commentary. “January Update: COVID Death Rates by Partisan Lean & Vaccination Rate (including BIVALENT BOOSTER data),” ACA Signups, Charles Gaba (sigh) Last month I posted what I assumed would be my final update of the red/blue and vaccination-level COVID...

COVID endemicity: 100,000+ (mainly needless) excess deaths per year – by New Deal democrat I suspect these updates are going to be much less frequent from now on; for example, if a significant new wave is evident.  That’s because, as we start our fourth year of the pandemic, the good news is that it is far less lethal than it was during its first two years. From March 2020 through March 2021, 500,000 Americans died of Covid. Another 500,000...

And the news Media is waking up to this? In December 2022, NPR wrote, “Medicare Advantage plans overcharged Medicare by millions,” Health News : NPR Citing an April 26, 2016 example of US government auditors asked a Blue Cross Medicare Advantage health plan in Minnesota to turn over medical records of patients treated by a podiatry practice whose owner had been indicted for fraud. Medicare had paid the Blue Cross plan more than $20,000 to...

I am hopping around a bit in this commentary. Fair warning. These are different versions taken from various authorities, different periods of time, and saying similar or the same thing. I am going to try to connect the dots here between some old and some more recent occurrences. Costs and prices keep rising in healthcare and are outstripping out ability to pay. Healthcare costs and the resulting prices keep rising and yes even in the...

This commentary by Charles Gaba was up earlier this year. What Charles is doing is issuing a warning about this batch of Covid. People have tossed caution to the wind, not boosting for less than adequate reasons, not practicing safe social practices, and not making up in public crowds. “Say hello to XBB.1.5: The Red/Blue COVID Death Rate Divide is no more . . . for the moment,” ACA Signups, Charles Gaba As noted in November: The graph...

“Social media and Damar Hamlin’s Collapse combine creating a vaccine misinformation field day“, Fortune, Ali Swenson, David Klepper, Sophia Tulp and The Associated Press “Unfounded claims about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines proliferated in the hours and days after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during Monday’s game, revealing how pervasive vaccine misinformation remains three years after the pandemic began. Even before...

Economist David Zetland lets us know our place of birth has a much larger impact on our success or failure globally than what we suspect. It is not solely up to us to be successful. The country of our birth has a great impact. The understanding of our luck to be where we are globally impacts our view of people’s success who our born into other countries. “Born (un)lucky?” The one-handed economist, David Zetland I was born an American and...

An brief introduction this time to Prof. Heather’s commentary. I am taking the opportunity to embolden the beginning of the three points Prof. Heather makes. Within those points, I also chose to emphasize a part of those points by italicizing them. The cost of healthcare and in this particular instance, insulin is one of those items. The use of Insulin is approximately 100 years old. There is no secret formula or advanced technology to it. One...

Coronavirus dashboard for year end 2022: becoming endemic, and still an important threat to seniors  – by New Deal democrat As we close out 2022, let’s look back at the overall picture for COVID. The best historical measure of actual infections is Biobot, which samples wastewater. This is because the advent of easy home testing one year ago meant that far fewer people have had “confirmed” cases this year in comparison to “actual” infections....

I just finished reading “Saving Ryan” by Emil Kakkis. Kakkis is a physician who pioneered enzyme replacement therapy for Mucopolysaccharidosis I (MPS I), a progressive and fatal disease. The story is about the patients and their families who struggle with the disease and Emil’s struggle to deliver life-enhancing therapy against terribly long odds. The Ryan of the book’s title is a kid with MPS I. His working class parents were not content to watch...