Tag Archives: Healthcare

Senator Manchin has a million excuses for doing “nothing.” I am not sure why the rest of the Dems do not out him. Biden has negotiated with Manchin in private which I would not do as it leaves Manchin the ability to tell the story, a story each time he changes his mind. There was a lot of hope for this administration as they had the majority in both bodies. One person is holding us back. Democrat in name only? Why? Maybe because if he were...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 20: signs of a peak in BA.2.12.1 in bellwether jurisdictions; is BA.4/BA.5 next? With no significant economic data today, let’s take a look at where the BA.2.12.1 COVID wave is. Nationwide cases (thin line below) have increased about 3.5x from their bottom of roughly 26,700 five weeks ago, to just over 100,000. Meanwhile, deaths (thick line) appear to still be in the process of making a bottom at under 300 per...

As is typical, Charles Gaba at ACA Signups.net has the answers to the question. Charles does a lot more of this type of analysis such as the Healthcare’s Three – Legged Stool, ACA Enrollment, Risk Pools, etc. All three of these are at Angry Bear. I am not sure why Michigan state and federal legislators are not knocking on his door for direction on healthcare. By that comment, I am not talking about commercial insurance exclusively. Ok, the...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 13: the virus will gradually become less lethal – because you can only die once, COVID-19 is still a pandemic and will gradually transition to an endemic. A year ago I thought that between nearly universal vaccinations and an increasing percentage of the population already infected, the virus would wane into a background nuisance by now. No more.  I am now thoroughly convinced that an unending series of variants...

Andrew writes on healthcare, mostly the PPACA plan and the various metal plans, and the latest gig (ARPA) resulting in lower costs for anyone under 250% FPL and lower costs for anyone higher than 400% FPL. All made possible due to Biden and Democrat’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It will expire EOY 2022 and I doubt Manchin will help with it. Without it and other aid, This all could have been a 2008 Redux. Mostly, what you will catch me...

In April 2019, “I finished an article entitled A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes.” I spent six weeks reading about this for a group which asked me to write on it from a male’s perspective. It took me all of that time. I could have doubled the size of the article I wanted to write to get the information out there. There was much to be said about the dangers women face becoming pregnant and giving birth. What prompted the resurrection of...

I started teaching medical students in 1988 and have been an instructor and course director for one or more first-year med school courses continuously since 1990. When I started, there were two full years of pre-clinical course-work. Now we’re down to a year and two-thirds and there are plans to shrink further. Some medical schools in the US already only have a single pre-clinical year. Personally, I thought the pre-clinical lectures and exams...

Copy and Paste for now until I can get into the Health Affairs article. Hospitalization averages a third of all healthcare costs. The pricing (Pricing equals costs in this instance) varies by region which kind of tells me there “may” be variation due to the strength of ACOs in regions. Trends in Hospital Prices Varied Widely Across the United States | RAND The average prices charged to commercial health plans by hospitals, as compared to what...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 27: Estimating the BA.2.12.1 wave The CDC updated its variant proportions data yesterday. BA.2.12.1 cases grew from 19% to 29% of all US cases:  and from 45% to 60% in NY and NJ. At the other end of the spectrum, BA.2.12.1 was only 9% of cases in the Pacific Northwest and 8% in the South Central region. BA.1 is down to only 2% of cases: Focusing on NY and NJ, NJ has had a little spurt in the...

This is mostly a C&P with editing involved. Taken from Altarum Health Sector Economic Indicators, and “Insights from Monthly National Health Spending Data through December 2021.” I have added the link Altarum to return to the original article. Without the additional government spending covering Covid costs and a recession during 2020 -2021, overall healthcare spending would have been higher. The nation is also having one Covid issue which...