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

Acupuncture: therapy or placebo?

First the disclaimers: I’m a PhD scientist with a well-trained crap detector. And I was a medical school (allopathic medicine) professor for 37 years. While I’ve never practiced medicine, I have a pretty deep understanding of evidence-based medicine. “At a time when people are increasingly concerned about drug side effects, some consider acupuncture an attractive […]

Healthcare in the United States

Curing U.S. Health Care, Part II Paul Krugman On March 23, 2010 President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — usually referred to either as the Affordable Care Act or as Obamacare — into law. Joe Biden, then the vice president, could be overheard whispering “This is a big fucking deal.” […]

It’s not just for diabetes anymore

GLP-1 receptor agonists [semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound)] are proving transformational for type II diabetes patients in particular and for obese individuals in general. Now, it appears they have benefits in cancer patients. “Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists in patients with four solid tumor types was significantly associated with lower rates of progression […]

Three Million did Lose Their Healthcare Insurance in 2026

1 trillion dollars cut from healthcare for tax cuts and CMS Trump causes 3 or more million people to lose healthcare insurance. Snatching government assistance away from them is just a start. In case you did not know, the 3 million consisted of children. More cuts will come as healthcare is unsubsidized. Medicaid Cuts: The […]

Hospitals and Patients

I feel a decade has passed since I last wrote (or presented articles) about Hospital Corporations buying up hospitals, closing some, and creating monopolistic environments. This has had impact in rural areas and lower income parts of states and cities. Residents suffer in the end due to higher pricing and less care available to them. […]

Healthcare Costs – KFF

What you are getting here is a rundown of health insurance costs as measured in 2025. KFFdoes do an annual survey to back up its yearly numbers. I grabbed the early portion of the KFF report on Employer sponsored healthcare for its employees. This piece tells you what each grouping pays by size of firm, […]

Vitamin K fearmongering kills

There’s no question about the safety and efficacy of vitamin K shots in newborns. They’re not vaccines. “Amid a rise in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, some influencers and media figures have cast doubt on the routine vitamin K shot given to newborn infants – and new reporting from ProPublica suggests such rhetoric may have had deadly […]

HPV vaccination

HPV infection accounts for 99% of cervical cancers. There’s a vaccine against HPV. Back when we still lived in Missouri, we had our teenage daughter vaccinated against HPV. Glad to see that in our adopted state of Rhode Island, 95% of adolescents got at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. Why would any parent […]

Healthcare Insurance Costs

Healthcare Insurance for a company is Overhead cost. Overhead costs are expenses supporting a business. They are not directly associated with labor input, to a product, or to a service you sell. I would not blame Labor for the rising role of healthcare costs in Overhead. This is beyond the cost of Labor input. It […]

Microplastics and RFK Jr’s brain

There’s no question that microplastics are ubiquitous our planet. Are they a threat to human health? RFK Jr, who is neither a physician nor a scientist, thinks so. “Reaching for a number to convey the urgency of the problem, he cited research that “reports concentrations [of plastic] in the brain equivalent by mass to roughly […]