Coming to their senses or just concerned about costs? The new risk pools will allow HSA plans.
One way to spend stimulus money: on signs that tell people how wonderful stimulus money is.
Results we like: Moderate drinking, especially wine, associated with better cognitive function.
UK is way ahead of U.S. on allowing the elderly and the disabled more control over their health care money: “Exotic holidays, internet dating subscriptions and adventure breaks, as well as visits to sex workers and lap dancing clubs have been permitted under the system.”
Palliative care adds 3 months of life for terminal lung cancer patients. Also, there is more happiness and mobility and less pain.
An eye for an eye: A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man’s spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him.
This is the Cost of Government Day: The average American has now earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of this year’s spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state, and local levels.
Whooping cough is back. “Highly contagious, spread by coughs and sneezes, pertussis is now epidemic in California.”
British scientists endorse MacStatins. Should fast food restaurants offer a cholesterol-lowering pill with their food?
Dark chocolate reduces blood pressure. But is it better than pills?
For every 1,000 patients on calcium supplements, an additional 14 heart attacks and 10 strokes would occur. But 26 fractures would be prevented.
One more good thing about global warming. Cold weather increases heart attacks.
Florida docs vote “no confidence” in the AMA. Finally, the doctors get some backbone.
Can exercise make you less angry? Apparently.
Congress already has the power to deny citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. No other developed country gives citizenship to “anchor babies — children born after a mother briefly crosses the border to give birth.”
Projected nursing shortage could be worse than doctor shortage. So where will the newly insured get their care?
Paul Krugman still thinks you can pay Social Security benefits with IOUs the government writes to itself. He won a Nobel Prize?
Are plastics making us fat? Probably not.
Government pays nanny $20,000 a year so that welfare mother can get a job earning $20,000 a year. No, that’s not a misprint.
Could an amateur scientist unleash a satan bug? Some are worried.
Could the individual market dry up? Anthem is not quoting any rates in California past September 22.
Downside of rural medicine: slow internet, no iPhone, dating woes.
30% of the elderly would rather die than enter a nursing home. An additional 26% indicate they are very unwilling to move to an institutional setting. (HT to Jason Shafrin.)
Every position of a Rubik’s Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. (HT to Marginal Revolution.)
Tom Sawyer had oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit disorder and conduct disorder. Ann Applebaum uses the DMS to psychoanalyze Mark Twain’s most notable character.
UN: eat insects instead of meat. You can order giant toasted ants online.
H1N1 pandemic officially over. WHO is studying the “lessons learned.”
The feds want to know your BMI. Sally Pipes: there are better things for the government to do.
Federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn. Paul Krugman scoffs at this. Steve Landberg replies.
Doctor visits are down. They dropped 7.6% (year over year) in May.
But MinuteClinic visits are up. They rose 36% during the second quarter.
One in five people went to the ER in 2007. Among those older than 75, one in four visited the ER at least once.
