Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. A chronic-pain patient advocate, who has been featured previously in KFF Health News coverage, spoke out on the social platform X about our “Payback: Tracking the Opioid Settlement Cash” project: Oh,…
Shannon Sharpe was having one of those 15-minutes-of-internet-infamy moments. Social media blew up in September after the retired Denver Broncos tight end — accidentally, he later said — broadcast some of his intimate activities online. One of his sponsors took advantage of the moment: the telehealth company Ro, which sells a variety of prescription medicines…
By MICHAEL MILLENSON “Money changes everything,” Cyndi Lauper famously sang about love to a pulsating rock ‘n’ roll beat. So, too, when it comes to financial incentives for surgeons, two new studies suggest, although “How much money?” and “What do I have to do?” are the keys to unlocking monetary motivation. The first study, a…
That is the title of a paper recently published in AJMC with co-authors Suhail Thahir, Alexa Klimchak, Ivana Audhya, Lauren Sedita, and John A. Romley. The abstract is below. Objectives: To quantify the magnitude of altruism value as applied to a hypothetical new treatment for a rare, severe pediatric disease: Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Study Design: Prospective…
Listen as senior producer Zach Dyer reports on the public health concerns over online sports betting and a fund in Missouri that might help with addiction treatment and prevention. The parking lot at the Super One Stop in Granite City, Illinois, is full. The convenience store just across the Mississippi River from Missouri sells liquor,…
In summertime, cows wait under a canopy to be milked at Mark McAfee’s farm in Fresno, California. From his Cessna 210 Centurion propeller plane, the 63-year-old can view grazing lands of the dairy company he runs that produces products such as unpasteurized milk and cheese for almost 2,000 stores. Federal regulators say it’s risky business….
By DANIEL STONE As a doctor, I consider Secretary Xavier Becerra and his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to be allies of practitioners like me. The behemoth federal agency administers Medicare and Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, and an army of public health workers. The Surgeon General, symbolic leader of the nation’s…
That is the questions an NBER working paper by Fleck, Heathcote, Storesletten, and Violante aims to answer. Using a variety of survey and administrative data, the authors reach the following 8 conclusions: (i) The federal tax and transfer system is progressive. (ii) State and local tax and transfer systems are close to proportional, on average….
States and the nation’s health industry were thrown into disarray after the Trump administration ordered Monday that the government freeze nearly all federal grants at 5 p.m. ET Tuesday, a sweeping directive that at least initially appeared to include funding for Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program that covers more than 70 million Americans. By…