ObamaCare’s Present and Imminent Medicaid Woes
Random variations, privatizing waivers, and cutting doctor’s fees for Medicaid by 48%, so many poor people won’t be able to find a doctor
Read more...Category Archives: Health care
Why Enrollment Figures Are a Deceptive Metric for ObamaCare’s Success
The ObamaCare marketplace is a lemon market, and a lemon market is a market failure by definition.
Read more...ObamaCare “Shared Responsibility Payments” Come Due on April 15, and It Won’t Be Pretty
All of the insane complexity I am about to describe — and which you are about to experience, on Tax Day — comes from ObamaCare’s central requirement. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
Read more...Jared Bernstein on Health Care Policy: Appalling Ignorance, or Deliberate Obfuscation?
I was going to say “lying weasel.” But that would be harsh.
Read more...Obesity: A Global Economic Issue
Yves here. This article may seem to be a bit wide of the usual Naked Capitalism terrain, but as the world has shifted from subsistence farming to significantly agri-business controlled food production and distribution, it is not unreasonable to see health outcomes like widespread obesity as a direct result of how the food industry has evolved.
Read more...The Hospital CEO as Scrooge – Hired Managers Get Raises While Presiding Over Deficits, Layoffs and Pay Cuts
Yves here. Hospitals have become yet another example of looting by the administrative classes. Roy Poses explains the result is ever-rising executive pay even when financial results often deteriorate. The next phase of their misrule will be to implement further cost cuts (not including their pay, mind you), with the almost-certain result that standards of care will fall.
Read more...Jonathan Gruber, ObamaCare, and “Stupid Voters”: It Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Shill
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! –Upton Sinclair Schadenfreude is a dish best served, and MIT Professor and Larry Summers student Jonathan Gruber, who played a key (though conflicted) role in legislating both ObamaCare and ObamaCare’s precursor, RomneyCare, certainly had it coming. […]
Read more...The Crapified Magic of the ObamaCare Marketplace
Just because it’s better doesn’t mean it’s any good.
Read more...Obamacare Architect Jon Gruber Says Deceiving Americans Necessary to Pass Bill
Nothing like the American policy elite showing its true colors
Read more...The Upshot’s ObamaCare “Interactive” Explainer in the New York Times: A Critique
Taking some swipes at visualizations and analysis based on Enroll America data.
Read more...“The Tragedy of Electronic Medical Records”
Yves here. We’ve written about the pitfalls of electronic health records in the past. One of the surprising reactions is the “dazzled by technology” response of some readers. While there are problems with relying on paper-based records, and electronic records could in fact remedy many of them, a large swathe of the public seems unwilling to hear that what is good in theory may not turn out well in practice.
The sorry fact is that electronic health records, which in theory should reduce errors and allow for more consistent delivery of medical services, were instead designed only with patient billing and control over doctors in mind. As a result, they are if anything worsening medical outcomes. One indicator: as we reported, the latest ECRI Institute puts health care information technology as the top risk in its 2014 Patient Safety Concerns for Large Health Care Organizations report. Note that this ranking is based on the collection and analysis of over 300,000 events since 2009.
This is another example of crapification. Electronic medical records have been implemented, with apparent success, in other economics. For instance, when I lived in Australia from 2002 to 2004, it was normal for doctors to make use of them during patient visits, making entries into the system, and I never got the impression they found it onerous. Here, in New York City, I still see doctors making considerable use of paper records. As the article indicates below, the reason is the US systems are costly, lower productivity, and make doctors less likely to review patient information.
Read more...WalMart Makes Empty Gesture to End Minimum Wage Pay While Cutting Pay Levels
WalMart just announced that it will at some unspecified point down the road end minimum wage-level pay for its workers. As we’ll demonstrate, there is way less here than meets the eye. In fact, all in pay levels, including benefits, are falling for WalMart workers, not rising.
Read more...Bob Goodwin: A Layman’s Guide to the Mathematics of Ebola
Ebola is a very nasty disease, but it is actually fairly easy to understand mathematically, which is why the disease prevention folks are confident in the best ways to manage this epidemic that otherwise seems to be growing exponentially.
Read more...How the Discharged Ebola Patient Demonstrates the Danger of Corporatized Medicine
As discussion, if not outright panic, about Ebola infections increases in the US, it is still hard to figure out what heath care professionals and the health care system need to do to protect patients and the public in a very changed world.
Read more...Can Our Commercialized Health Care System Contain Ebola?
Yves here. I’m not one to fan Ebola fears. In fact, I’m a bit loath to give it the prominence in Links that I am, given the small number of cases in the US and in the world ex the afflicted parts of Africa. While the mortality rate is high, it’s not all that infectious. You are still more at risk from dying by virtue of driving (if you drive) than you are of dying from Ebola or terrorism.
However, whether or not Ebola morphs into a more virulent version, concern about it is legitimate, if for no other reason than that the US healthcare system is neither willing nor able to cope well with flareups of deadly diseases.
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