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

Dr. Fauci is a hero

The most economically consequential event of the past decade was the COVID pandemic. It saw countless heroic actions that will be forever unrecognized. Among those who were recognized were Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines. A more controversial figure […]

Insulin A Drug Pricing Analysis

Money from Sick People Part IV: Paying a Premium for Drug Pricing Irregularity — 46brooklyn Research Starting with the Q1 2023 Drug Pricing file (all of this information was knowable before the 2024 Medicare plan bid process was completed). Within the files are the five insulin products we identified as taking large price decreases. 46 […]

The Middlemen of Healthcare Pharma Especially

I copied the two paragraphs below (actually I took one and split it) from Matt Stoller’s Big News Letter. Matt is talking about the same issues I have been talking about for years. The Pharmaceutical Industry and their rip off pricing. It is a good read if you wonder over there. The YouTube is also […]

The shingles vaccine may protect from dementia

As America ages, dementia is becoming a bigger and bigger healthcare burden. Medicare won’t pay for long-term nursing home care. Dementia will be a growing drag on the US economy at least until the baby boomer die off. Shingles is caused by herpes virus, a neurotrophic virus. For many people who had chicken pox as […]

Cares Act Funding Rural and Inner-City Hospitals Miss Out Again

Been writing on Rural and Inner-city hospitals and the lack of funding for them, the buying up of the same by larger entities, and the abuse of the 340B program by the larger hospital. Once the larger hospital buys the inner-city hospital, there is a tendency to cut services and also abuse the 340B program. […]

Are Drug Companies Alone Responsible for the Prices We Pay for Medicines?

I had presented Part I and Part II a while back. Part III was difficult to present in a piece-meal way so for now I have set it aside. What is interesting about Part IV is I can beak it apart into segments, still maintain the flow of informatio, and present it in a logical […]

March 2024, Subsidy Enhancements Allow ~ Half of all Enrollees to be Eligible for Free Benchmark ACA Silver Coverage

It has been a while since I have commented on anything ACA related. This popped up in my in-box. I follow Andrew Sprung for the technical side of it. xpostfactoid’s Andrew and Charles Gaba at ACASignups are my go-to people on ACA healthcare and healthcare. To answer this question . . . how can it […]

Asking questions and dealing with the answers

One motivation to getting my genome sequenced was to see whether I had known risk alleles for dementia (spoiler alert: I don’t). My dad was diagnosed with frontotemporal lobe dementia a few years before he died. His brain biopsy after death returned a diagnosis of Alzheimers. He might have had both. One of the known […]