Hits & Misses – 2009/4/7
Obesity update: The tablescape (the placement and size of dishes, bowls, silverware and drinking glasses) can increase consumption by more than 20 percent.
Why do we need Washington? Walgreens is offering free health care to the jobless and the uninsured.
What happens when it's free: Austin's ERs got 2,678 visits from 9 people over 6 years.
Keeping prices up: Some drug companies are paying other drug companies to keep generic drugs off the market.
The Austin ER story is tuly disturbing. Realize that all those people abusing the emergency rooms are crowding out everyone else who is trying to seek care.
Brand name drug companies paying generic companies not to produce their products? This one should have been a “Beam me up Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.”
What’s fascinating about Walgreens is that once you get out of the third-party payer system, providers are going to have strong incentives to meet people’s health care needs. And they will find inexpensive ways of doing so as long as the government does not interfere with them.
Max. I would bet that a small charge would be all that is necessary to reduce the abuse and limit care to those who really need it.