Older Americans Say They Feel Trapped in Medicare Advantage Plans
More on why you should not get a Medicare Advantage plan if at all possible.
Read more...Category Archives: Health care
Seeing the Human in Every Patient − From Biblical Texts to 21st Century Relational Medicine
Medicine, at least in the US, is increasingly divorced from caring for patients, as opposed to treating maladies. Can that be remedied?
Read more...We Deserve Medicare for All, But What We Get Is Medicare for Wall Street
An overview of health care, particularly Medicare, rentierism, with private equity playing a starring role.
Read more...Science on Trial, Part 2: An Immodest Proposal
In a variant of “follow the money,” some recommendations of how to lead with money, as in reform science research by reforming funding.
Read more...Science on Trial, Part 1
A new paper dissects how the Covid crisis demonstrated the failings in how science is practiced now. But are its suggestions for improvement bold enough?
Read more...‘This Should Be a National Scandal’: Medicare Advantage Plans Using AI for Denials
Medicare Advantage is neither Medicare nor an advantage.
Read more...As Foundation for ‘Excited Delirium’ Testimony by Police Cracks, Fallout Spreads
Rooting out the concept of “excited delirium” will take time in a country where law enforcement is spread across roughly 18,000 agencies governed by independent police chiefs or sheriffs.
Read more...CDC’s Weak and Vague N95 Guidelines Endanger Health Workers, Conflict with Cal/OSHA Standards
In the Covid version of fiddling while Rome burns, cheap hospital systems hide behind the CDC to avoid issuing N95s to front line workers
Read more...Patents and Intellectual Property in Biomedical Science: A History in Two Tales
How the US licensing of NIH and other government funded drug and biomedical research became a grift for Big Pharma.
Read more...Is It Time to Tax Ultra-Processed Foods Because of the Massive Harm That They Do to Society?
Yes, Virginia, ultra-processed food is a health hazard. But what to do?
Read more...FTC Chief Gears Up for a Showdown With Private Equity
Over the past three years, FTC and Department of Justice officials have signaled they would apply more scrutiny to private equity acquisitions in health care, including roll-up deals in which larger provider groups buy smaller groups in a local market.
Read more...Feds Need to Enlist Consumers to Police Eyepoppingly High Level of Medicare Advantage Ad/Marketing Fraud
Yet another reason to be leery of Medicare Advantage…..widespread deceptive marketing.
Read more...New Technologies to Get Around Old Laws: Algorithms Being Used to Evade Antitrust Rules, Fix Prices and Worse
Is organizing a price-fixing cartel still illegal if an algorithm tells you to do it?
Read more...Do Masks Work During the Pandemic? Scientists Say “Yes.” Secondary Reviews of Clinical Trials Say “No.” So, Which Is It?
Four authors with top statistical chops, including Yaneer Bar-Yam and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, stomp all over the anti-mask Cochrane Report.
Read more...Extra Fees Drive Assisted Living Profits
Assisted living facilities have become one of the most lucrative branches of the long-term care industry that caters to people 65 and older. Investors, regional companies, and international real estate trusts have jumped in.
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