Author: Scott Welch
Last month, the federal government revealed that the U.S. spent $4.1 trillion on healthcare in 2020, over 20% of GDP and twice as much as the developed-world average. While hundreds of billions of dollars were spent fighting Covid-19, the overwhelming majority went to propping up the country’s broken healthcare system. National healthcare spending has doubled, adjusted for inflation, since 2000.
When President Biden tapped Eric Lander as White House science adviser in January 2021, he tasked the renowned genomics researcher with “reinvigorating” American science. Following Lander’s stunning resignation on Monday evening, however, the question is no longer whether he’ll reinvigorate the U.S. scientific enterprise. It’s whether he’s derailed it. In a resignation letter, Lander apologized ...
In a surgical clinic in the California desert, what appeared on paperwork as “medically necessary” was more than a mirage. Explanations given to insurers were as phony as the breasts implanted in scores of patients. The former executive director of The Morrow Institute clinic pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court to a health care fraud conspiracy ...
In 2021, the California Assembly introduced a new bill, AB 1400, which – if passed – would have eliminated health care in California, as we know it today. Instead, all health care in California would be provided by one new “Single Payer” system called “CalCare” – with no other options for Californians. The move would have eliminated all existing ...
People with Medicare will be able to obtain up to eight over-the-counter Covid-19 tests a month for free starting in early spring, the Biden administration said Thursday. Under the plan, Medicare will directly pay certain pharmacies and other participating entities, allowing people with Medicare or Medicare Advantage to pick up the tests for free. “There ...
The number of people getting coverage during the just-wrapped, 2 1/2-month open enrollment period with the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange increased by nearly 25% over last year’s 81,903 enrollees. The state said this year saw the most since the exchange began operating as a state-based marketplace in 2019.
The White House is preparing to move on from Omicron. Emboldened by falling case counts, the Biden administration is plotting a new phase of the pandemic response aimed at containing the coronavirus and conditioning Americans to live with it.
"While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."
That’s part of a larger drop in cases and most coronavirus metrics. The county hit the peak of the current surge in the last few weeks, and numbers have dropped quickly. That had been expected based on data from around the world looking at how the omicron variant caused rapid increases followed by similarly rapid decreases in case counts.
In a Tuesday interview, Lombardo said he continues to encourage officers and other employees to get the vaccine. But with a recent dip in positive cases at the department, he lifted the vaccine mandate for new hires about a week ago.