Do Baltimore Schools Need More Money?
Is the problem with Baltimore’s district schools a lack of funds?
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart argued as much during a recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.”
However, under even cursory scrutiny, Stewart’s claim falls apart like a Lego Super Star Destroyer dropped from ten feet. As economist Alex Tabarrok explained:
Let’s forget the off-the-cuff comparison to Afghanistan, however, and focus on a more relevant comparison. Is it true, as Stewart sugge...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 5, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Jason Bedrick Source Type: blogs
The Health Reform Landscape: Medicare Payment Scorecard
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) set ambitious goals for increasing the proportion of Medicare payments designed to improve the value of care patients receive. HHS goals include tying 50 percent of traditional, or fee-for-service, Medicare payments to quality or value by the end of 2018 through alternative payment models.
Just a few weeks ago, Congress passed legislation adding additional heft to these goals. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act will help significantly increase the proportion of Medicare payments reflecting and supporting the quality of care.
Today my ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - May 5, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Suzanne Delbanco Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Hospitals Medicare Payment Policy Quality Accountable Care Organizations pay-for-performance Source Type: blogs
Simple Rules for Healthy Eating — from the New York Times
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Source: Dr Portnay - April 22, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr Portnay Source Type: blogs
Building Cost Transparency from the Ground Up
In March 2015 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) sponsored the second annual conference on health care price, cost, and quality transparency. At the conference, Niall Brennan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data officer, pointed out that just a few years ago, a three-day summit on health care transparency would have been unheard of because there would have been nothing to talk about.
At the summit pre-conference, the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) did a deep dive about its RWJF-funded project focused on health care cost transparency at the local level that illustrated just ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - April 20, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Tara Oakman Tags: Costs and Spending GrantWatch Payment Policy Quality Consumers Health Care Costs High-Value Care local health care Nonmedical Determinants Source Type: blogs
I inwardly watch my life’s blood flow away. And no one notices.
I’m walking very slowly with my dad down the produce aisle at the local supermarket, past the colorful waxed apples, Mexican mangoes and Rainier cherries, and imagining my life’s blood trickling onto the floor from an invisible wound.
As I pass by the misting system spraying the bins of green, red, yellow and orange peppers, past the lady reaching for carrots, past the stock guy balancing the heirloom tomatoes into a precarious stack, I want to scream. The sense of loss is overpowering.
Continue reading ...
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Fi...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 8, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Maureen Hirthler, MD Tags: Physician Geriatrics Primary care Source Type: blogs
The joke’s on the Whole Grains Council
If you’re in the mood for a good laugh, take a look at the newsletter from the Whole Grains Council:
Wheat Belly . . . Grain Brain . . . April Fool’s!
. . . in areas from climate change to nutrition, we see people swayed by pseudo-science every day. Twenty studies show the sky is blue. One study shows the sky is green – and before long, there’s someone who’s written a best-selling book claiming that everyone who ever told you the sky is blue was out to get you; new evidence shows the sky is definitely green.
Here are the claims that they say are among the “sky is green” fictions (with...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - April 2, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle grains Whole Grains Council Source Type: blogs
No, An Apple A Day Won’t Keep The Doctor Away
No, an apple a day does not appear to keep the doctor away. But, a new study semi-seriously suggests, it may keep the pharmacist away. The study serves as an instructive and humorous way to look at the perpetually thorny problem of how to best understand and make use of findings from observational studies. As this new paper makes clear, the limitations of observational studies are quite considerable, but that does not mean that they are completely worthless. Although apples have long been considered a healthy snack, whether eating apples actually reduces healthcare use has not been assessed until now. More… (Source: CardioBrief)
Source: CardioBrief - March 30, 2015 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: Prevention, Epidemiology & Outcomes apples Centers for Disease Control and Prevention diet nutrition Source Type: blogs
Medicare Payment Data and "When Transparency Isn't Transparent"
Last year saw the release of two large physician databases—Open Payments and the “Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data” files, which contain Medicare Part B fee-for-service payments, listed by physician. While the Sunshine Act was many years coming, the Medicare billing data caught many by surprise. Now, neither show any sign of slowing down. The Medicare data release took place in early April last year, but not without a fair share of controversy and misleading news reports. A recent article entitled “When Transparency Isn’t Transparent” written by associate clinical professor of surgery at Mount Sin...
Source: Policy and Medicine - March 16, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
The Payment Reform Landscape: Price Transparency Tools Better But Not Good Enough
Catalyst for Payment Reform (CPR) will spend significant time in 2015 looking at the features payment reform programs must have to be workable for purchasers and sustainable for providers. We look forward to sharing in this space what we learn, as we have done each month for over a year. But this month, we’ll take a slight detour to devote some “ink” to an issue near and dear to our heart—price transparency, a critical building block for payment reform.
Across the board, price transparency tools from vendors and plans are improving, but are the price estimates tools give consumers accurate? Unfortunately, the answ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - February 6, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Suzanne Delbanco and François de Brantes Tags: All Categories Consumers Employer-Sponsored Insurance Health Care Costs Payment Policy Quality Source Type: blogs
Lowering health care costs is more than cost awareness
I wish lowering health care costs was as easy as “cost awareness,” but as one patient put it, “I never pay the first few bills, because the amount changes every time a new bill is sent.” The payment system is so fragmented that it’s hard to know what will become an expense with any given illness. Even the savviest of consumers of health care have difficulty with hospital payment systems. Most consumers of health care are not savvy consumers. Comparing the cost of apples and oranges in one grocery store to another is not like comparing a hip replacement from one hospital to another. Often in emergency si...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 22, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Kristeen Maurin, RN Tags: Patient Health reform Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - 4th week of January 2015
The cold of late January has been hard on our living things and we’ve sorted all our produce to eliminate cold damaged fruits/vegetables in the hoop house, root cellar, and forest. The apples from this year’s harvest are still fairing well. Empire, Macoun, Winesap, RedSpy, and Rome are still crisp. The Spencer apples have softened and are beginning to mold. We composted about half a bushel. The root vegetables - beets, daikon radish, and turnips were kept in soil until late December. At the moment, they are still crisp and fresh, ready to be turned into soups, salads, and canning.The sq...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - January 22, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Big Boy
In person, I know he still seems small for 13, but today at his annual appointment to see the CRS team consisting of a nutritionist, social worker, a team of dental experts, etc., they were BLOWN away by his growth spurt. Even more remarkable, this spurt actually happened sometime between May and November because we had other doctor visits in between to do weigh-ins....He has never been above the 5th percentile and today.....25th percentile!!! He has grown nearly 4 inches and gained 19 pounds in that time frame. It sparked their interest in Goldenhar Syndrome and several declared they do some more research on the subject.T...
Source: Cochlear Kids - January 22, 2015 Category: Audiology Authors: VBnBama Source Type: blogs
Viroids, infectious agents that encode no proteins
Genomes of non-defective viruses range in size from 2,400,000 bp of dsDNA (Pandoravirus salinus) to 1,759 bp of ssDNA (porcine circovirus). Are even smaller viral genomes possible? The subviral agents called viroids provide an answer to this question.
Viroids, the smallest known pathogens, are naked, circular, single-stranded RNA molecules that do not encode protein yet replicate autonomously when introduced into host plants. Potato spindle tuber viroid, discovered in 1971, is the prototype; 29 other viroids have since been discovered ranging in length from 120 to 475 nucleotides. Viroids only infect plants; some cause ec...
Source: virology blog - January 14, 2015 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Basic virology Information DNA dependent RNA polymerase noncoding RNA plant potato spindle tuber viroid ribozyme siRNA viral virus Source Type: blogs
Newspaper Doubles Down on Anti-School Choice Errors
Jason Bedrick
Give Rolling Stone credit: when their story on sexual assault at the University of Virginia completely unraveled, they at least had the decency to admit their errors and apologize to their readers. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Florida’s Sun-Sentinel.
A few weeks ago, the Sun-Sentinel ran an error-filled editorial against educational choice. Since then, it has refused to run a retraction or even a correction of its numerous errors, including:
Falsely claiming that the legislature enacted a “massive expansion” of the scholarship tax credit law this year;
Mistakenly relying on the moot fiscal analy...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 15, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Jason Bedrick Source Type: blogs
