Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Making the physician sausage

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 […]

Medicare vs Commercial Insurance Pricing 2012 – 2019

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 […]

Coronavirus dashboard for April 27: Estimating the BA.2.12.1 wave

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 […]

Healthcare Sector Indicators and Insights

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 […]

Masking Up to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission

SARS-CoV-2 transmission on planes – Katelyn Jetelina (substack.com) This substack article came to me by way of a commenter asking if I was interested in it. Of course, I am. It is a part of healthcare and covers a topic I believe is important to all of us. Stopping the transmission of Covid. Introduction On […]

Healthcare News – Georgetown Center for Children and Families

These are sections of healthcare news articles which I thought might catch your eye and may interest you on topics in healthcare. I added the links to each article so you can read “the rest of the story” if you care to do so. Georgetown Center for Children and Families – What can be found […]

Coronavirus dashboard for April 20: there’s a new subvariant in town

Coronavirus dashboard for April 20: there’s a new subvariant in town Let me start with the current overview. As of today, Nationally cases are now rising sharply, up to 41,500, an increase of 25% in the past week: Hospitalizations are generally flat at slightly over 10,000, but new admissions have risen steadily, by 8% over […]

Watching the BA.2 “bump”

Coronavirus dashboard for April 13: watching the BA.2 “bump” The BA.2 “bump” (h/t Dr. Eric Topol) is upon us (and hopefully a “bump” is all it is). Let’s take a look at where we stand. Cases bottomed 8 days ago at 28,378. As of yesterday, they had increased to 32,835: Hospitalizations have continued to decline, […]

Increasing Costs are driving Insurers and Systems Apart

Some History 2014: A frenzy of hospital mergers into ACOs as detailed by Philip Longman and Paul Hewitt could leave many families having lesser amounts of healthcare paid for by healthcare insurance due to healthcare industry consolidation leading to higher prices. We have seen this happen with higher prices for insurance plans, increased deductibles, and […]