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

Libertarianism on drugs

Libertarianism is the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development. This is well-illustrated by the bleat that people should just “do your own research.” Look, I made an entire career out of research and was well-compensated for my judgement. But I certainly wouldn’t trust my judgement on which drugs are safe and effective […]

RFK Jr. is wasting your tax dollars

Remember when RFK Jr. promised to have an answer to the cause of autism by September 2025? He’s already walking that back: “We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We’re also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of […]

Medicare Advantage

Brief introduction to Overpayments to Medicare Advantage Plans . . . Ending Overpayment in Medicare Advantage – Center for American Progress Through the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, private insurers are expected to save money by reducing waste, avoiding overuse, and providing more coordinated care than is available through traditional Medicare. Research finds MA plans are significantly […]

America is not healthy

Between 2022 and 2023, there were 1.5 million excess deaths in the US. These are people who would be alive if the US mortality rate were comparable to other industrialized nations. “The authors agree that further research is needed to fully understand the driving factors behind excess mortality, but suggest looking to other nations for […]

Some Links to Healthcare Articles You May Find Interesting

I was reading about various healthcare issues I found on the internet and in particular Today on Medscape. The snippets are of longer articles which go into greater detail. You may find other articles to be of interest on Medscape at Latest Medical News, Clinical Trials, Guidelines, Today on Medscape. That is if they are […]

Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Eli Crane of Arizona and Medicaid

In Arizona’s Mr. Andrew Biggs is lecturing us on how Republicans are going to pass a spending bill benefiting those who do not need tax breaks to get by. Instead of cutting Defense or some other programs, Andrew along with other AZ Republicans such as Elijah James Crane will be cutting Medicaid which supports lower […]

Medicare Advantage: Alleged Kickbacks Further Expose Corruption

CEPR’s Brandon Novick wrote a piece on Medicare Advantage plans. It is brief enough to make for easy reading, It also gets to the point of Medicare Advantage plans. As it was commercial Medicare Advantage plans were overcharging for the same care Traditional Medicare would charge. In many cases the plans would not approve the […]

23andMe resurrected

For most people, 23andMe is synonymous with direct-to-consumer genomics. It isn’t DNA sequencing, it’s microarrays that are capable of detecting many annotated variants. As with all direct-to-consumer genomics, the cost to consumers was supposed to be subsidized by the aftermarket for genetic information. In the event, 23andMe declared bankruptcy recently, and there was a question […]

Rural Hospitals Financial Losses, Closures, and Revenue

Part One of this report is an introduction to Losses, Revenue, and Costs incurred by Rural Hospitals. I have broken the report up so as to allow a reader some time to absorb the information on Rural Hospitals. It is a bit lengthy although it does have numerous graphs and charts. The report itself was […]