Arguing with idiots
Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,wrote this now famous editorial a couple of weeks ago. It is a sad day when the editor of a big city newspaper is forced to go on the record defending the concept of reporting the truth. I ' ll just give an excerpt, in case you haven ' t read it.The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.The
truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his
false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended
to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 20, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
If data is the new oil, there ’ s going to be war over it
By MATTHEW HOLT
I am dipping into two rumbling controversies that probably only data nerds and chronic care management nerds care about, but as ever they reveal quite a bit about who has power and how the truth can get obfuscated in American health care.
This piece is about the data nerds but hopefully will help non-nerds understand why this matters. (You’ll have to wait for the one about diabetes & chronic care).
Think about data as a precious resource that drives economies, and then you’ll understand why there’s conflict.
A little history. Back in 1996 a law was passed that was supposed to ma...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 15, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Health Tech The Business of Health Care 21st Century Cures Act Carequality Data Epic HIPAA Integritort Joe Biden Judy Faulkner MDPortals Novellia Particle Health Reveleer TEFCA Source Type: blogs
More Poli-sci
This post will be in two parts -- or maybe I ' ll just get to one part now and do the second part separately, we ' ll see how it goes. The first part is some empirical true facts about elections and electoral democracies, or republics if you prefer to use that term for representative systems such as ours. I don ' t want to get hung up on vocabulary. The second is philosophical -- how should we understand democracy, popular rule, We The People? How does that work and how can it work and how should it work?So, Part One. Many people assume that elections and the resulting legislative and executive (and in some states, judicia...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 11, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Medicine as a public good
Medicine is unlike most other goods and services in the extent to which it has important positive externalities – that is, benefits for people outside of the transaction, who are not the providers or consumers. (Of course it has negative externalities as well, including carbon emissions and notably, a huge quantity of plastic waste.) A straightforward positive externality is infectious disease control. Prev enting or curing infectious diseases prevents them from being transmitted to others. This is an immense benefit to society that goes far beyond the direct value to people who are vaccinated or treated.Another positive...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 25, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Goodness!
The essential, first-order or pure concept of " public goods " is whatever we benefit from that is " non-excludable " and " non-rivalrous. " That means you can use it without paying for it, and if you use it, it ' s still there for others. An example, at least for the time being, is the oxygen in the air. Back in the good old paleolithic, there was a lot more of that. Basically, the land and the water and the plants and animals were there for the taking, and there was usually plenty so rivalry was uncommon. Of course, this only worked within your own tribe -- sometimes people of different tribes tried exclusion and rivalry...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 14, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
What Scares Healthcare Like EVs Scare Detroit
By KMI BELLARD
I’m thinking about electric vehicles (EVs)…and healthcare.
Now, mind you, I don’t own an EV. I’m not seriously thinking about getting one (although if I’m still driving in the 2030’s I expect it will be in one). To be honest, I’m not really all that interested in EVs. But I am interested in disruption, so when Robinson Meyer warned in The New York Times “China’s Electric Vehicles Are Going to Hit Detroit Like a Wrecking Ball,” he had my attention. And when on the same day I also read that Apple was cancelling its decade-long effort to build an EV, I was definitely paying attention.
...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 6, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Health Tech Biden Detroit EVs Hospitals Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Economics 101, Lesson One
One
way you can create jobs is to lower people ' s taxes. If people have more money
to spend, it means somebody has got to produce more for them. And the producers
then need to hire people. It ' s Economics 101! -- George W. Bush, Springfield, MO,
January 14, 2002*Mr. Bush was very fond of saying " It ' s Economics 101! " It was a catch phrase for him, and other politicians often say it. But can you think of a critique of the above statement? Is there anything wrong about it?(Jeopardy! music plays.) Okay. When government acquiresrevenue from taxes, what happens to the money? Does it just disappear? Why no.T...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 26, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Patient Advocates Argue Exercising Bayh-Dole " March-In " Rights Reasonable to Ensure Ongoing Supply of an Insulin Novo Nordisk Intends to Discontinue
Back in 2016 (when President Obama was still in office), the trade group known as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (better known by the acronym PhRMA) claimed in an organization-published white paper (seehttps://web.archive.org/web/20161022175500/https://phrma.org/sites/default/files/pdf/bayh-dole-act-white-paper-summary.pdf for an archived copy of that paper from PhRMA; note that it has since been removed from PhRMA ' s website, hence I found a copy on the Internet Archive) that championed the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Understand that what PhRMA really wants to prevent a particular provision...
Source: Scott's Web Log - February 11, 2024 Category: Endocrinology Tags: march-in rights 2024 Alliance to Protect Insulin Choice APIC Bayh-Dole insulin detemir Levemir Novo Nordisk Source Type: blogs
Apple Watch Series 9 Review: From Health Monitoring To Lifestyle Integration
As part of The Medical Futurist team, I am lucky enough to live in a world where cutting-edge technology is never too far away. Our lead researcher, Dr. Meskó, is a veteran in testing over a hundred different devices, setting a high benchmark in our reviews. I have a much more limited experience, but spending these past years with this team expanded my knowledge and understanding of digital health technology. So when I upgraded to a Series 9 Apple Watch, it was obvious that a review will follow.
As the whole wide world, our core team is divided by our preferences: Apple or Android? I’m on the Apple side, with my unw...
Source: The Medical Futurist - January 30, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andrea Koncz Tags: TMF Health Sensors & Trackers smartwatch Apple watch review Source Type: blogs
Reforming new drug development
So what to do about the misalignment between incentives under the current drug patenting and licensing regime, and public health? (To summarize recent posts in a pistachio shell, the pharmaceutical industry is motivated solely by profit, the most profitable drugs are not necessarily the ones that contribute the most to population health, and the prices are too high for many people to afford in any case.) It is true that if there were an effective international regime to limit pharmaceutical prices, the investment in new R&D would be severely limited. As Thomas Pogge puts it (Pharmaceutical Patents and Economic
Inequali...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 28, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Business Case for a Biosimilar Company to Bring a Copy of Levemir to Market
My readers may recall that in November 2023, I blogged that Novo Nordisk announced it plans to retire (stop making) its first " Lantus killer " known as Levemir (insulin detemir injection) in the U.S. in 2024 (catch my post at https://blog.sstrumello.com/2023/11/novo-nordisk-to-discontinue-levemir-in.html for more). At the time I learned of the announcement, I was on vacation in Amsterdam, so I just made a note of the development and blogged about it a few weeks later upon my return.Like other patients my age, I have endured the company ' s previous insulin " retirements " . Novo Nordisk ' s time-frame for withdr...
Source: Scott's Web Log - January 25, 2024 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2024 Biosimilar Levemir Novo Nordisk PBM Source Type: blogs
Drug prices continued: Innovation?
Pharmaceutical manufacturers claim that they need patent protection and marketing exclusivity so they can charge high prices to recoup the costs of drug development and clinical trials. There are a few things wrong with this argument, but they add up to the general fact that the system does not serve the public interest. Drug companies care about one thing only, that is profit. And the pursuit of profit does not serve the interests of public health or social welfare.One obvious mismatch between the goal of public health and the goal of profit is that a relatively cheap drug that you can take once or for a week or so, that ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 23, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
End the Tax Exclusion for Employer Sponsored Health Insurance
Michael F. Cannon (Cato Institute), End the Tax Exclusion for Employer Sponsored Health Insurance, Cato Inst. Pol ’y Analysis No. 928 (2022): The “tax exclusion” for employer‐sponsored health insurance shields workers from paying income or payroll taxes on such benefits. The... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - January 22, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
Value Based Care – 2024 Health IT Predictions
As we kick off 2024, we wanted to start the new year with a series of 2024 Health IT predictions. We asked the Healthcare IT Today community to submit their predictions and we received a wide ranging set of responses that we grouped into a number of themes. In fact, we got so many that we had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting. Check out our community’s predictions below and be sure to add your own thoughts and/or places you disagree with these predictions in the comments and on social media.
All of this year’s 2024 health IT predictions (updated as they’re shared):
John and ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 5, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Administration Ambulatory C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Regulations Revenue Cycle Management 2024 Health IT Predictions 9amHealth Andreessen Horowitz Anthony Hudson Anton Kittleberger Source Type: blogs
Regarding the previous post on oligarchy . . .
I published a comment on it but I want to address it here. Obviously manufacturers moved their operations overseas in search of cheap labor and lax or non-existent environmental and safety regulations so they could make their products more cheaply, and yes, that made many products cheaper for consumers. WalMart is particularly known for squeezing manufacturers to lower prices and hence encouraging this dynamic. Americans as consumers benefited, Americans as workers lost out. As it turns out, the net result was losses for people with less education, as those manufacturing jobs -- often unionized -- that enabled blue collar ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 1, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
