This piece from the Urban Institute’s Kids’ Share discusses how cuts to federal programs will have a negative impact on all children benefiting from federal programs. That is a given. However it will be a much larger impact than thought. Such programs make up a smaller percentage of the Federal Government spend. There is little […]

A typical administrative response to financial difficulty in large organizations is to hire consultants. The theory is that the expertise of consultants will uncover efficiencies that will (a) relieve the difficulties and (b) repay the investment in the consultants. So how’s that working out for American nonprofit hospitals, many of which struggling and threatened with […]

The old cut taxes for the wealthy and we will have a better economy which will benefit those in the lower income brackets. The recently passed bill passed by Trump and Republicans creates a deficit in which case many in Congress will be looking for ways to alleviate such. Cuts in programs is one way […]

I recently retired as a professor in the Edward A. Doisy Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Who was Edward A. Doisy? He was the only Nobel Laureate from Saint Louis University. He shared the 1943 prize in Physiology or Medicine for identifying the two forms of vitamin […]

As I told a guy today up at Slater Park, I plan to live to 100 because very few people die after that age. I didn’t tell him that I plagiarized that George Burns line. I could also have quoted Woody Allen: I plan to achieve immortality by not dying. There are certainly things one […]

Healthcare commentary, April 19 by Paul Krugman. It has been a while since I tackled the topic and pulling from multiple resources. The issue still remains. Healthcare in the United States is expensive. Even with the healthcare aid provided by the Biden Administration via congressional approval was not enough. And then voters stayed home, voted […]

In “A 1980 Letter on the Risk of Opioid Addiction letter” article, identified were 608 citations of the index publication and noted a sizable increase after the introduction of OxyContin (a long-acting formulation of oxycodone) in 1995 (Figure 1). Of the articles that included a reference to the 1980 letter, the authors of 439 (72.2%) […]

Introduction: I did this commentary because I thought the remark by the Senator from New Hampshire was ignorant. If anything, Senators and Representatives should get out in the public and work with or see what their constituents are doing to make a living. In which case and this is a maybe, Sununu would not be […]

The following (Healthcare Cost Increases) is taken from the longer Employ America piece. His portion touches upon healthcare costs and how those costs impact labor income and hiring. An Increase in healthcare and insurance costs is similar to a tax. As it increases, more money must be set aside having an impact on overall overhead. […]

Craig Venter died yesterday at the age of 79. As a grad student, I wondered whether it would be possible to sequence the human genome. As a postdoc, I did both Maxam and Gilbert sequencing and Sanger sequencing (first with E coli Klenow fragment, then reverse transcriptase) a couple hundred nucleotides per reaction, each reaction […]