Federal Interest Costs, 1790 –2033
Chris EdwardsAs federal spending continues to rise, accumulated federal debt will soon reach all ‐time highs relative to the size of the economy. Federal debt held by the public will hit 107 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2028, surpassing the previous peak after World War II. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) oftenhighlights the rising debt ‐to‐GDP ratio as a warning for policymakers to change course and avert a debt crisis.Another warning sign of a coming debt crisis is soaring interest costs. With interest rates rising, federal interest payments have doubled from 1.2 percent of GDP in 2...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 27, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
AI: Not Ready, Not Set – Go!
By KIM BELLARD
I feel like I’ve written about AI a lot lately, but there’s so much happening in the field. I can’t keep up with the various leading entrants or their impressive successes, but three essays on the implications of what we’re seeing struck me: Bill Gates’ The Age of AI Has Begun, Thomas Friedman’s Our New Promethean Moment, and You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills by Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin. All three essays speculate that we’re at one of the big technological turning points in human history.
We’re not ready.
The subtitle ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech AI Health care tech Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Idaho Public Television and State Health Officials Lie to the Public by Telling them Smoking is Not More Harmful than Vaping
In a public education campaign entitled " Do You Know Vape? " Idaho Public Television in collaboration with the state health districts isinforming the public that: " Vaping isnot safer than cigarette smoking. "The campaign is also making several other alarming claims, including that:vaping causes brain, bone, and lung injury to young people;third-hand aerosol from vaping (i.e., particles that stick to surfaces) can cause "asthma,respiratory illness, increased risk of disease, headaches andincreased risk of cancer" ; and vaping exposes users tometals in the lungs that can cause lung cancer.The Rest of the StoryRather t...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - March 21, 2023 Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs
Reading the Entrails
I often come across arguments to the effect that humans aren ' t really unique or special, we ' re just one animal among all the others. I find this assertion, frankly, just silly. Every species is unique in some ways, of course, that ' s why we can classify them. But humans are highly unusual in very important ways. For example, the biomass of domesticated mammals exceeds that of all the other mammals on earth combined; and the biomass of domesticated poultry -- mostly chickens -- isthree times the biomass of all other birds on earth.This happened in part because of language, which is an absolutely unique human capacity t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Militarism in Mexico: Another Unforeseen Result of the Drug War
Daniel RaisbeckIn 2012, during his second failed campaign for president of Mexico, Andr és Manuel López Obrador promised repeatedly that, if elected, he would send the Mexican army back to its barracks within six months of his inauguration. The country’s militarization was a political issue since 2006, when former president Felipe Calder ón, who narrowly defeated López in that year’s election, resorted to the army to combat the increasingly powerful drug cartels.During his third campaign in 2018, when he finally won the presidency, L ópez remained a critic of Mexico ’s militarization, promising to use ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 15, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel Raisbeck Source Type: blogs
This Warning Sign Of Infidelity Is In Their Voice
A warning signal that someone is a higher risk for cheating on their partner. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - March 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jeremy Dean Tags: Relationships Source Type: blogs
An Early Warning System for Landslides Protects Sitka, Alaska
A 2015 landslide that killed three people in Sitka, Alaska, changed how residents looked at the steep hills all around them. The community worked with researchers to develop a warning system to prevent such tragedies in the future. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - March 14, 2023 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
Whoops! AI might have invented 40000 new toxic nerve agents … but probably not
TL:DR – Software used to predict which chemicals in a database have potential as new medicines has been flipped as a warning demonstrating that the same system could be used to predict whether they are highly toxic.
Artificial intelligence, AI, machine learning, language models, neural networks, generative models, algorithms trained on big data. A lovely collection of buzzwords that have been littering grant proposals for years and are now emerging into the real world as apps and websites and citizen science projects. For chemists and pharmaceutical scientists, AI has been a tool to experiment with for a long time. ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 4, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Source Type: blogs
This Suicide Warning Sign Is A Myth
Suicidal thoughts can fluctuate rapidly. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - March 3, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jeremy Dean Tags: Suicide Source Type: blogs
Neuroimmune Modulation for Inflammatory Disease: Interview with Dr. Simhambhatla, President and CEO of SetPoint Medical
SetPoint Medical, a medtech company based in California, is developing a neuromodulatory device that is intended to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The overlap between the nervous and immune systems is increasingly appreciated, and this technology aims to capitalize on this to create a new treatment for inflammatory disease.
The neuromodulation device is intended to be implanted on the left cervical vagus nerve in an outpatient procedure. It stimulates the nerve with electrical pulses. The idea is that this can act to calm inflammatory processes that contribute to rheumatoid arthritis, without the drawbacks of immunosuppres...
Source: Medgadget - February 28, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Medicine Neurology autoimmune immunology SetPointMed Source Type: blogs
How Can Health IT Help Reform the CDC?
This article summarizes their responses.
Paths to Interoperability
A recent article exposes the woeful silo-ing of public health: Data often has to be faxed and re-entered into new systems manually. I wonder whether the path to complete integration requires adopting a single, worldwide, FHIR-based standard (which is time-consuming and probably requires jettisoning old database systems) or programming these systems to translate data from one format to another.
I heard details about problems with COVID-19 lab reporting at a state level from Dr. Paulo Pinho, vice president & medical director of innovation at Availity Clin...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 28, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Healthcare IT Regulations 21st Century Cures Act Amazon Amazon Healthcare Amazon S3 Availity Availity Clinical Solutions CDC Data Exchange Diameter Health EMPI FDA Gus Malezis Health Gorilla hl7 Imprivata Interoperability Source Type: blogs
Wearable Device Senses When Vocal Fatigue Sets in
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a wearable that can detect when someone is talking or singing, and tallies this information up to provide a warning when the wearer might be at risk of vocal fatigue. Overusing your voice in a short space of time can lead to vocal fatigue and even injury. This technology is useful for patients with vocal disorders, but also for people who rely on their voices a lot, such as singers, politicians, and teachers. The device communicates with a smartphone app to keep track of voice use. The researchers are also developing a system whereby a user can indicate in the app if th...
Source: Medgadget - February 27, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: ENT etc. Telemedicine northwestern Source Type: blogs
All Three Legs of the Obamacare Stool Are Working Well – Part 2
BY GEORGE HALVORSON
2022 Medicare Advantage data gathering process change made last year just made upcoding for plans irrelevant and impossible, but the critics do not accept that it happened.
CMS just ended that upcoding debate for 2022 by completely killing the coding system for the plans, effective immediately. The plans can’t code risk levels up because the coding system was eliminated entirely for 2022.
RAPS is dead.
The payment approach for Medicare Advantage now has no upcoding components and the government just used their new and more accurate numbers to create the 2023 payment level for the pla...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 17, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Affordable Care Act Medicaid Medicare Medicare Advantage Obamacare Source Type: blogs
Socialism in Theory and Practice
David BoazSixty-five percent of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism,according to Gallup. Gallup says 39 percent of Americans overall view socialism favorably, and 45 percent wouldvote for a socialist for president. Of course, they may have varying views of what " socialism " means. Some presumably mean government ownership of the means of production, the standard definition. Others may have in mind what Europeans call " social democracy, " as when Sen. Bernie Sanders defended his self-proclaimed socialism by saying he wanted the United States to be more like Denmark. The prime minister of Denmark promptly responde...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 16, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
