JUST OUT: New "Chart of the Century" with data through December 2023. Increases in College Tuition and Fees continue to far outpace increases in Average Wages and the Overall CPI. If College Tuition had increased at the rate of the Overall CPI since 2000, it would be 28% LESS… pic.twitter.com/kWlo1nP7I6 — Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) … Continue reading Cost disease update: healthcare and education lead the way
Jill Barshay: In a Department of Education survey released in October 2023 of more than 1,300 public schools, 60 percent said they were partnering with community organizations to provide non-educational services. That’s up from 45 percent a year earlier in 2022, the first time the department surveyed schools about their involvement in these services. They include access … Continue reading Schools’ mission shifted during the pandemic with healthcare, shelter and adult ed
ObamaCare was sold to Americans as something that would increase options, and allow people to keep plans they liked. Like most government programs, this has since been proven a lie. https://t.co/8YInTRGBbQ — Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 26, 2023
Josh Anderson: In 2024, eligibility will increase to include people whose only underlying condition is mental illness. By the way, in 2021, Mental Health Research Canada concluded that they’d found a correlation “between vaccine hesitancy and mental illness.” Not even COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy specifically, just vaccine hesitancy broadly speaking, because surely there are no legitimate reasons anyone might reasonably regard … Continue reading Euthanasia is Not Healthcare
Scott Girard: After the district’s insurance consultant, M3, received word from GHC in February about its premium increase, district officials and M3 worked with Quartz to see if there was a better solution. They were left with two options, according to the letter, neither of which raises the amount staff will pay for premiums this … Continue reading “The board discussed the subject (13.1% healthcare cost increase) in closed session on April 17, but there was no public indication of the change until the Friday letter”
Interesting letters section re: the NYT puberty blockers investigation. Three are tut-tutting NYT for playing into right-wing tropes and putting trans kids at risk, fourth is this, from one of the lead investigators behind the FDA approval of Lupron pic.twitter.com/wjFt3ejjfX — Park MacDougald (@hpmacd) November 29, 2022
Terrence Jeffrey: Americans spent more on taxes in 2020 than they did on food, clothing, healthcare and entertainment combined, according to newly released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. American “consumer units,” as BLS calls them, spent a net total of $17,211.12 on taxes last year while spending only $16,839.89 on food, clothing, healthcare and entertainment … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Americans spent more on taxes than food, clothing, healthcare and entertainment combined
Logan Wroge: According to MTI’s memo, health insurance changes under consideration include: Moving future retirees from health insurance plans offered through the district to the state Department of Employee Trust Funds’ Local Annuitant Health Program, a relatively new program for retired public employees. Increasing employee premium contributions for teachers and other employees from 3% to … Continue reading Commentary on the Madison School District’s healthcare costs
Kyso: Globally, health expenditure as a percentage of GDP has increased in recent years, so evaluating the health care systems used in different countries is an important tool for identifying best practices and improving inefficient health care systems. Total health expenditure is the sum of public and private health expenditures as a ratio of total … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Efficiency of Our Healthcare Systems
Chad Aldeman: Consider the graph below, using data from the Census Bureau’s Public Education Finances reports. From 2001 to 2016, LAUSD increased overall spending by 55.5 percent, but its spending on salaries and wages increased just 24.4 percent. Meanwhile, employee benefit costs soared 138 percent. LAUSD is an extreme example, but this situation is playing … Continue reading “This year alone, LAUSD will spend $314 million on [retiree healthcare] benefits, which is the equivalent of more than $500 per pupil or $12,500 per teacher. Those costs are project to rise significantly over time.” –
Robert Hart:: The consequences of this oversight are pernicious. Women are far more likely to suffer the deleterious side effects of medication than men. Pregnant women get sick, but the consequences of taking many medications when pregnant are chronically understudied, or worse yet, unknown entirely. Women are far less likely to receive the correct treatment … Continue reading If you’re not a white male, artificial intelligence’s use in healthcare could be dangerous
Tap for a larger version. March, 2017 School Board Presentation (PDF). Notes and links: health insurance. 2015: Health Insurance premiums account for 16% of the Madison School District budget MMSD will spend $61 million on health insurance this year. One of Every Six Dollars is Spent on Health Insurance in the MMSD budget. Health Insurance … Continue reading Madison School District Healthcare Cost Summary
Julia Powles: Data-driven tools and techniques, particularly machine learning methods that underpin artificial intelligence, offer promise in improving healthcare systems and services. One of the companies aspiring to pioneer these advances is DeepMind Technologies Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Google conglomerate, Alphabet Inc. In 2016, DeepMind announced its first major health project: a collaboration … Continue reading Google DeepMind and healthcare in an age of algorithms (privacy)
NBC: Oral arguments are set to begin Thursday for the lawsuit of a Minnesota woman who is suing her transgender teen daughter along with a variety of local school and health agencies. Anmarie Calgaro’s lawsuit alleges that healthcare providers treated her 17-year-old as an emancipated minor without her consent when the teen began receiving transgender … Continue reading Anmarie Calgaro’s lawsuit alleges that healthcare providers treated her 17-year-old as an emancipated minor without her consent
Tap for a larger version. Madison School District Administration Slides (PDF): Compensation: Prior Years Strategy – Funded step advancement, lane movement, & base wage increase (varies), offset by multiple reductions in personnel / non-personnel areas For 2017-18: – With referendum resources, provide for step advancement, lane movement, and base wage increase (TBD), without multiple offsetting … Continue reading Madison School District’s Healthcare costs (!) & 2017-2018 Budget
David Barnes: ObamaCare won’t work without young Americans like me, and the Obama administration knows it. That’s why the president is holding a Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit focused on the Affordable Care Act at the White House on Tuesday. But no matter what the president says, many young Americans simply aren’t buying what he’s … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: On Substantial Healthcare Cost Increases
James Wigderson: Despite the administration’s plan to make sure no employee experienced a net loss in pay in the coming year, Loumos wanted the district to cover the cost of the employee contributions for the first year so every employee could have the full amount of their raises. “What would it be if we held, … Continue reading The Madison School Districts Maintenance And Healthcare Spending Priorities
The Lincoln Project (PDF): Measured in inflation-adjusted dollars per full-time equiv- alent (fte) student, states have been cutting this support for well over a decade, and spending cuts accelerated in response to the Great Recession. Between 2008 and 2013, states cut appropriation support per fte student in the median public research university by more than … Continue reading Public Research Universities: Changes in State Funding – Note Healthcare & K-12 Tax & Spending Growth
Guy Boulton: The average premium for single coverage is $6,251 this year, with workers on average paying $1,071 of the cost. The average premium for family coverage is $17,545, with workers on average paying $4,955 of the cost. Premiums have increased an average of 5% a year since 2005, compared with 11% a year between … Continue reading K-12 tax & spending climate: higher healthcare deductibles take toll on family incomes,
Pat Schneider: “I will consider contributions to health care, depending on what we see in terms of costs and the budget,” Burke said. “But we need to look at compensation in its entirety to make sure we remain competitive while we are accountable to the taxpayers.” The school district is in the process of preparing … Continue reading Healthcare Costs & The Madison School District
David Wahlberg: Madison Teachers Inc. and five other Madison-based unions are so concerned about significant financial losses at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin, they’re urging members to vote for particular candidates in Group Health’s board election Thursday. “MTI cannot stand idly by and watch GHC disappear,” John Matthews, the teacher union’s executive director, … Continue reading Healthcare Costs & The Madison Schools
Colleen Flaherty: Institutions say complying with the Affordable Care Act has caused them to pass on some costs to employees, according to a new survey from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Since the act began to take effect, some 20 percent of institutions have made changes to benefits in an effort … Continue reading Healthcare cost growth pushed to faculty
One small governmental entity has shown the way. The West Bend School District went self-insured years ago, then bid out its network needs, then went CDHP and now is putting in its own on-site clinic. It’s in the vanguard in learning from the private sector payers about what works and being a fast-follower.
Result? It is delivering first class health care for less than $10,000 per employee. That’s half of what many districts are playing for fully insured plans.
Think about the numbers. At a savings of $10,000 per employee and about 1000 employees, it is saving the taxpayers $10 million per year.
The district is giving raises; it has found funds for deferred maintenance; it found $5 million in reserves to put against a $25 million bond program for school construction.
Smart, anti-orthodoxy thinking.
The Greendale School District’s high-deductible plan has been in place for the past four years but was not available to teachers until last year. When the district first offered the plan, nonunion employees agreed to try it out but teachers declined, Green said. Once Act 10 came into effect, the district offered the high-deductible plan to teachers again. The district allowed teachers to choose between the high-deductible plan and the traditional plan this school year, and 70% decided to go the high-deductible route after seeing how it was working for other staff members, Green said.
The district runs the plan in conjunction with a health reimbursement account.
In addition to a wellness plan, the Greendale district provides an on-site nurse practitioner from Aurora Health Care.
Green said the high-deductible plan significantly reduces the price of health insurance plans for school districts. When factoring in the cost of the high-deductible plan each year plus what the district is putting into the health reimbursement account, the total is about $1,000 less per family plan per year than the traditional plan.
Related: The Madison School District recently ended their longtime support of a costly WPS healthcare plan.
As soon as the school day ended, the rush at the health clinic began.
Two high school seniors asked for sports physicals. A group of teenagers lined up for free condoms. A girl told a counselor she needed a pregnancy test.
The clinic, at Belmont High School near downtown Los Angeles, is part of a rapidly expanding network of school-based centers around the nation offering free or low-cost medical care to students and their families.
In California, there are 183 school health centers, up from 121 in 2004. Twelve more are expected to open by next summer, according to the California School Health Center Assn.
The centers have become a small but important part of the nation’s healthcare safety net, experts say, treating low-income patients who might otherwise not have regular medical care. Now, they add, campus clinics are serving as a model for health officials trying to reduce costs.
GE Healthcare, based in Waukesha, announced Monday that it was moving its X-ray business to Beijing, China.
Anne LeGrand, vice president and general manager of X-ray for GE Healthcare, told Bloomberg news that “a handful” of top managers would move to Beijing. She said there would not be any job cuts.
The move of the unit to China will help “make the business more nimble and responsive while continuing to strengthen our local focus and grow our global footprint,” she said.
General Electric Co. said it is moving its X-ray business headquarters to China to accelerate sales in the country’s fast-growing health-care market, the latest sign of China’s growing importance to the giant U.S. conglomerate.
The X-ray unit will be the company’s first business to be based in China.
The business has already begun the move–which includes the unit’s chief executive and three other members of its executive team–and expects to complete the process by year end, said Anne LeGrand, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare Global X-Ray. The senior leadership team’s move to Beijing is aimed in part at helping develop more medical equipment specifically for the Chinese market, Ms. LeGrand told a news briefing Monday.
GE said it doesn’t expect the move to result in any job losses in the U.S., where the unit has been based in Waukesha, Wis. The Wisconsin X-ray division has 120 employees. The company also said it is too early to say how many employees it will hire for the unit’s new Beijing headquarters.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is calling on Milwaukee Public Schools and union leaders to work quickly on ways to get more MPS employees to take less expensive health insurance.
In an interview, Barrett said, “I’m calling on the school district, on the School Board, on the representatives of the employees, to meet as quickly as possible to see if they can find a solution to stave off” what lies ahead for MPS, including projections of cuts in hundreds of teaching jobs and increases in average class size.
“I believe a big component of that is putting more people into the lower cost health care plan,” he said. MPS offers two health plans, and about 80% of employees take one that costs $7,380 a year more for a family than the other plan.
A new three-year agreement on healthcare announced Wednesday by the Los Angeles Unified School District will preserve a generous benefits package for about 250,000 employees and their families while also limiting district costs.
But the tentative deal also increases the district’s ongoing budget deficit and could lead to higher medical expenses for employees if healthcare costs continue to rise sharply.
The agreement maintains free lifetime benefits for district employees (there is no monthly payment to the district). But the pact sets benchmarks for when new workers become eligible.
Settling the healthcare issue — the teachers union’s top priority in negotiations — could diminish the immediate possibility of a strike. Just one day earlier, United Teachers Los Angeles leaders had scheduled a strike authorization vote over protracted contract talks.
The Madison School District Board of Education approved a collective bargaining contract with the custodial units last night in which the custodians agreed to move from their current health care plans (GHC and the Alliance PPO) to a 3 HMO plan which is GHC, Dean Care and Physicans Plus. MMSD continues to pay 100% of … Continue reading Madison School District Healthcare Cost Savings
Milwaukee reporter Amy Hetzner: A change in health insurance carriers was achieved by several Dane County school districts because of unique circumstances, said Annette Mikula, human resources director for the Sun Prairie School District. Dean Health System already had been Sun Prairie’s point-of-service provider in a plan brokered by WEA Trust, she said. So, after … Continue reading Sun Prairie Cuts Health Care Costs & Raises Teacher Salaries – using the same Dean Healthcare Plan
Will Flanders: Among the key findings of this report: Few single pieces of state-level legislation have garnered as much attention and controversy in the 21st Century as Wisconsin’s Act 10. Passed by Republican Governor Scott Walker over the strong objections of Democrats, 3 the legislation introduced several important reforms to public sector unions around the … Continue reading Back to the Past: The Fiscal Threat of Reversing Wisconsin Act 10
Leon Sapor: Imagine if American doctors told parents the following truths. The mental health benefits of puberty blockers are highly uncertain, according to multiple systematic reviews of the evidence, the bedrock of evidence-based medicine. The World Health Organization says the evidence is “limited and variable.” There is no research into long-term harms, but some evidence suggests decreased IQand brittle bones. Permanent sterility is guaranteed for … Continue reading The reckoning over puberty blockers has arrived
Matt Barnum: Nationally, average teacher pay has barely budged since 1990, despite states pumping more funding into public schools. Across the country, new education dollars have instead gone toward additional staff, rising healthcare costs and pension obligations. Now, some lawmakers are championing new pay mandates to force the issue, amid elevated teacher-turnover rates and a … Continue reading Even with funding up, teacher pay hasn’t increased in three decades; new bills would change that
Claire Jones: Swagel, who served in the US Treasury under Republican president George W Bush, acknowledged that next year would be important “for fiscal policy in particular”, given debate over extending the tax cuts and Obama-era healthcare subsidies that are also due to expire. The CBO projections issued this week showed debt-to-GDP levels surpassing their … Continue reading K-12 Tax & $pending climate: “The US faces a Liz Truss-style market shock if the government ignores the country’s ballooning federal debt”
Sarah Shaffer: Coming together around the question “What could we win together?” this broad cross section of Minnesota’s working class decided to go on the offensive, developing a set of guiding principles over months, made possible in turn by years of relationship building through street uprisings and overlapping crises. Shortly after we spoke that day, Villanueva and her colleagues felt … Continue reading A major network of unions and community groups in Minneapolis and St. Paul lined up bargaining processes for new contracts—and in some cases, strike votes around March 2
Brianna Abbott:: Stacy Hernandez always had irregular periods. But when the bleeding wouldn’t stop, she got scared. She said she visited her general practitioner and urgent care at least six times. Doctors changed her birth-control medications, blamed her excess weight and suggested the bleeding would eventually subside. It didn’t. After more than a year, a … Continue reading Uterine Cancer Was Easy to Treat. Now It’s Killing More Women Than Ever.
Natalie Yahr cites a University of Wisconsin Survey of families with young children. Conducted by the UW Survey Center and analyzed by UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, the survey went to around 3,500 people across the state. Researchers compared the responses of participants who have children under age 6 with those who don’t. … Continue reading Nice Article on some Parenting Costs; Deeper Dive?
Wall Street Journal: The University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine requires that first year students take a class called “Structural Racism and Health Equity” as part of the standard curriculum. In one exercise for the course, students divide by racial group and retreat to different areas to discuss antiracist prompts. This is known … Continue reading UCLA’s medical school divides students by race to teach ‘antiracism.’
Julie Wernau: Braxton is among thousands of teenagers and young adults who have developed delusions and paranoia after using cannabis. Legalization efforts have made cannabis more readily available in much of the country. More frequent use of marijuana that is many times as potent as strains common three decades ago is leading to more psychotic episodes, according to doctors and recent … Continue reading More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis
Julie Wernau: Braxton is among thousands of teenagers and young adults who have developed delusions and paranoia after using cannabis. Legalization efforts have made cannabis more readily available in much of the country. More frequent use of marijuana that is many times as potent as strains common three decades ago is leading to more psychotic episodes, according to doctors and recent … Continue reading More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis
Kelly Meyerhofer: Alex Mancilla graduated last month from Marquette University, an electrical engineering degree in hand and a job lined up at GE HealthCare. Behind the educational milestone is the story of a young south side Milwaukee man whose parents immigrated from Mexico and were unable to help him financially. College wasn’t even on Mancilla’s … Continue reading All-In Milwaukee guides hundreds of low-income students through college. It plans to eventually help thousands
Ling Xin: After more than a decade of research and teaching in the United States, Chinese-born maths star Sun Song has joined a university in eastern China as a full-time professor. The 36-year-old geometer started his role as a permanent faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (IASM) at Zhejiang University earlier … Continue reading Star mathematician Sun Song leaves US for China
Liz Essley Whyte: Jessica Harris’s 15-year-old daughter was walking to her school bus in London, Ky., last month when a classmate offered her a piece of red candy. The square-shaped sweet seemed harmless at the time to Harris’s daughter. But it turned out it contained a form of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating ingredient in … Continue reading Hemp Gummies Are Sending Hundreds of Kids to HospitalsH
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has filed a lawsuit against the State Bar of Wisconsin for promoting discriminatory DEI practices including its “Diversity Clerkship Program,” which offers premier internship opportunities based primarily on race. WILL’s client must pay mandatory and annual State Bar dues, which not only fund this internship program, but … Continue reading Civics: WILL Files Lawsuit Against Discriminatory “DEI” State Bar Practices
Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau The Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) is statutorily responsible for ensuring the safe and competent practice of credentialed professionals in Wisconsin. In August 2023, DSPS administered more than 200 types of credentials for individuals who work in healthcare professions, business professions, and the trades. DSPS is funded primarily by program … Continue reading Notes on credentialism and bureaucracy
Scott Girard: “Wisconsin’s Teacher Pay Predicament,” published today by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, says it’s likely to get more challenging for districts to match the rising cost of living, even as many of the largest school systems gave out record wage increases ahead of the 2023-24 school year. That includes the Madison Metropolitan School … Continue reading Notes on Wisconsin teacher compensation (focus on salary; no mention of district benefit spending)
Wall Street Journal: We’ve all heard children say things like “Look at me, I’m a robot” or “When I grow up, I’m going to be Captain America.” We smile when children say these things, because we know that children live in a world of imagination unhindered by reality. Why then does the medical community and … Continue reading Should Transgender Treatments Be Available to Minors?
Mohar Chatterjee and Rebecca Kern: The White House is poised to make an all-hands effort to impose national rules on a fast-moving technology, according to a draft executive order. President Joe Biden will deploy numerous federal agencies to monitor the risks of artificial intelligence and develop new uses for the technology while attempting to protect … Continue reading Permissionless innovation or “only what is permitted”
US Fifth Circuit: For the last few years—at least since the 2020 presidential transition—a group of federal officials has been in regular contact with nearly every major American social-media company about the spread of “misinformation” on their platforms. In their concern, those officialshailing from the White House, the CDC, the FBI, and a few other … Continue reading Another court finds Biden Administration censored the public
Anna Wilde Mathews: Health-insurance costs are climbing at the steepest rate in years, with some projecting the biggest increase in more than a decade will wallop businesses and their workers in 2024. Costs for employer coverage are expected to surge around 6.5% for 2024, according to major benefits consulting firms Mercer and Willis Towers Watson, … Continue reading Health-Insurance Costs Are Taking Biggest Jumps in Years
Holman Jenkins: Our steps did not significantly impede its spread even as our efforts miraculously quashed the annual flu. In year two, despite vaccination, as many Americans died as in year one. Yet further healthcare meltdowns were avoided. Vaccines clearly saved lives; if lockdowns and masking mandates contributed by keeping people alive until they could be vaccinated, … Continue reading Our pandemic outcome would have been better with more debate, less censorship.
Anna Mutoh: Jaclyn Ohmer couldn’t wait to have a baby. Before she was pregnant, she bought onesies and beagle-shaped booties. She and her husband, her high-school sweetheart, found out they were having a son and prepared a Star Wars-themed baby room. The 26-year-old from Parma, Ohio, was ready for his arrival. Things got harder after … Continue reading The Tragedy of Being a New Mom in America
Maya Bodnick: Every year, hundreds of thousands of students around the U.S. participate in competitive debate. Most start competing at a young age (early high school or even middle school), eager to learn about politics. At its best, the activity teaches students how to think critically about the government and the trade-offs that policymakers face. They are … Continue reading How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate
Hayden Dublois But in 2022, a Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) review of more than 6,400 hospitals found that nearly two-thirds were not complying with price transparency requirements.3 More recent records suggest that most hospitals are still not compliant today.4Other organizations have suggested as many as 75 percent of hospitals are ignoring the price transparency … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: health care costs
Christopher Rufo Following the French Revolution, the British philosopher Edmund Burke signaled a note of caution, warning that the desire for progress, uninhibited by convention, can lead to disaster. Revolutions in the name of lofty ideals—liberty, equality, science—can yield their opposites. A revolution in our time merits similar consideration: the transformation of human sexuality and, … Continue reading A public hospital in Portland is using a robot to create artificial genitalia.
Leor Sapir: A growing number of countries, including some of the most progressive in Europe, are rejecting the U.S. “gender-affirming” model of care for transgender-identified youth. These countries have adopted a far more restrictive and cautious approach, one that prioritizes psychotherapy and reserves hormonal interventions for extreme cases. In stark contrast to groups like the American Academy of … Continue reading Why Europe and America are going in opposite directions on youth transgender medicine
Harold Robertson: At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost … Continue reading “The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent”
Why is Norway failing?#Norway (pop. 5.475.240) vs. #Finland. (pop. 5.569.431) Norwegian Public Sector 885.419 Finnish Public Sector 647.000 Finland – less tax, better school system and healthcare. Norwegian politicians are mismanaging the country! 1/5 pic.twitter.com/wqy1nzwzmy — Alexander Ellefsen⚡️ (@4lexEllefsen) June 9, 2023
The Generalist: The great business theorist Peter Drucker didn’t think all that much of ideas. “Ideas are cheap and abundant,” the management expert said, “What is of value is the effective placement of those ideas into situations that develop into action.” Drucker’s position is a common one. Across academia and industry, plenty of fine thinkers … Continue reading Where Do Great Ideas Come From?
David Blaska: The UW-Madison branch of Workers Strike Back met here late last month and plastered the campus with their signage. Their pitch is a “demand” for a yearly salary of $50,000. These are graduate degree students who help their professors grade papers, lead classes, and work at the lab. UW-Madison’s 5,400 graduate research and … Continue reading UW-Madison Grad student and union efforts
Dick Bauer: During the pandemic, this same university chose not to send its foreign students to their native homes during the two-year period of the COVID pandemic. The reason: The F2F tuition the school was charging the students (and this school was in the top 100 in Forbes magazine for their graduate school) was three times the … Continue reading America’s higher education institutions preach social justice while running on the exploitation of adjunct workers
Stanley Goldfarb: For better or worse, I have had a front-row seat to the meltdown of twenty-first-century medicine. Many colleagues and I are alarmed at how the DEI agenda—which promotes people and policies based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation rather than merit—is undermining healthcare for all patients regardless of their status. Five … Continue reading How America’s Obsession with DEI Is Sabotaging Our Medical Schools
Do No Harm Medicine The bill’s findings clearly state that “public medical institutions of higher education best serve the state when providing meritorious education and training that positions future healthcare professionals to serve all patients adequately and to the best of their ability.” Do No Harm could not agree more. To ensure that happens, the bill includes several … Continue reading “Tennessee Higher Education Freedom of Expression and Transparency Act,”
Gustavo Arellano: He joined his father in El Salvador after graduating from high school in Florida, teaching English as a second language classes while studying engineering. But the pay wasn’t good, so Arias returned to Florida, where he worked at a Radio Shack for four years while waiting for a chance “to go back to … Continue reading SEIU and the Los Angeles School District
Kevin Bardosh, Alex de Figueiredo, Rachel Gur-Arie, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, James Doidge, Trudo Lemmens, Salmaan Keshavjee, Janice E Graham, Stefan Baral Vaccination policies have shifted dramatically during COVID-19 with the rapid emergence of population-wide vaccine mandates, domestic vaccine passports and differential restrictions based on vaccination status. While these policies have prompted ethical, scientific, practical, legal and … Continue reading The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good
William Galston: For most of my life, I rejected the assertion that America is a “sick society.” This judgment seemed too broad and lacking in nuance. Yes, there was regress in some areas, such as the surge of gun-related crimes in the 1980s. But there was progress on other fronts. Life expectancy increased steadily, and … Continue reading A poor pandemic response and high drug-overdose deaths prove all is not well.
Christopher Snowdon: Since back then Big Tech’s fact-checkers were still describing claims about SARS-CoV-2 being airborne and face masks preventing infection as ‘misleading’, a fake-news flag was something of a badge of honour. And, as with those claims, the ‘disputed’ information in my article has been borne out by the evidence. After a brief burst … Continue reading “I achieved a personal milestone in April 2020 when, for the first time, one of my articles was flagged up as fake news on Facebook”
Robert F. Graboyes: “Be skeptical of everything you hear, including this sentence.” That was the central message of the 48 semester-long classes I taught to medical professionals—doctors, nurses, therapists, administrators, etc. over 19 years. Officially, my courses were on the economics of healthcare, but they also encompassed ethics and a much broader look at epistemology … Continue reading Eugenicists also believed that science is real
Michael DePeau-Wilson,: Children have been presenting in large numbers and with more severe viral illnesses than typically seen, physicians at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) said. The CHOP healthcare system, which includes two hospitals and more than 600 beds, is still grappling with a high volume of pediatric patients with viral infections, including respiratory syncytial … Continue reading Doctors at CHOP say kids probably missed out on building immunity due to the pandemic
summarised via Tyler Cowen: But going forward, I think the old metrics that showed large advantages for single payer are going to continue to slide. Unions (formal or otherwise) are going to militate for higher pay. Governments are going to have to deal with one side of the political spectrum going into hoc to the … Continue reading Notes on the pros and cons of single payer (K-12 taxpayer models…)
10news: “At this time, Knox County Schools will not be reporting cases or sending notifications,” spokesperson Carly Harrington said. “We do encourage students and staff to stay home if they are sick and to follow the advice of their healthcare provider.” On Monday, the Knox County Board of Education talked about reports and possible new … Continue reading Knoxville schools won’t report COVID-19 cases or send exposure notifications for upcoming school year
Eugene Volokh: The student government president’s executive orderprovides, among other things, That it shall be prohibited for the Undergraduate Student Government Executive Branch to contract or expend funds to any individual, business, or organization which actively advocates to further limit by law access to reproductive healthcare, including, though not limited to, contraception and induced abortions. This … Continue reading UNC Chapel Hill Student Gov’t Cuts Off Funding & Contracting to Anyone Who “Advocates” for Limits on Abortion
Anna Wilde Mathews, Tom McGinty and Melanie Evans: Nonprofit hospitals get billions of dollars in tax breaks in exchange for providing support to their communities. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows they are often not particularly generous. These charitable organizations, which comprise the majority of hospitals in the U.S., wrote off in aggregate 2.3% of … Continue reading Big Hospitals Provide Skimpy Charity Care—Despite Billions in Tax Breaks
Jeff Klausner: Moving forward, we must improve our sentinel hospital surveillance to include only those cases likely to be a true COVID-19 hospitalization. Many experts suggest that can be easily done by counting those cases that required oxygen therapy or specific COVID-19 treatment. Population-based surveys would be very useful, albeit expensive and time-consuming, but conducted … Continue reading Bad news: COVID-19 numbers are pretty meaningless
David Perry: Tech is just a tool or a plaything for him like any other. But we were promised more than that — we were promised a future in which technology would mediate between my disabled son and an ableist world. Instead, what is available to my son is driven more by arbitrary systems than … Continue reading My son is 15. He is also an autistic boy with Down syndrome.
Chang Che: Until 2022, Shanghai was called “the enchanted city.” It was a land of Gucci bags and French wine and weekend jogs along the Bund. It was a land of restless nights spent in the company of eclectic strangers. It was a land of coffee and convenience, of cloud-kissing skylines and flash-delivery bubble tea. There is … Continue reading The crisis caused by an aggressive zero-Covid policy has shaken faith in the technocratic regime.
Peter Sullivan “Right before the election, people would get notices of big premium increases, and that will certainly not reflect well on Democrats,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Vulnerable Democratic lawmakers are trying to sound the alarm. A group of 26 House Democrats from swing districts, led by Rep. Lauren … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: looming health insurance cost increases
Alex Gutentag: The collapse of educational pathways and structures has had a particularly brutal effect on the poorest students, who can least afford to have their schooling disrupted. High-poverty schools had the lowest levels of in-person instruction, causing low-income students to fall even further behind their more affluent peers. The entirely foreseeable ways in which bad COVID-19 … Continue reading New ‘discoveries’ of the harm caused by school closures are as disingenuous and politically motivated as the original policies themselves
Aaron Kheriaty Japan’s ministry of health is taking a sensible, ethical approach to Covid vaccines. They recently labeled the vaccines with a warning about myocarditis and other risks. They also reaffirmed their commitment to adverse event reporting to document potential side-effects. Japan’s ministry of health states: “Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it … Continue reading Japan’s Vaccination Policy: No Force, No Discrimination
Helen Dale America’s dysfunctional airports are instances of widespread low state capacity. And this is bigger than airports. Low state capacity can only be used to describe a country when it is true of multiple big-ticket items, not just one. State capacity is a term drawn from economic history and development economics. It refers to a government’s … Continue reading “Low state capacity”: spending more for less
Johan Anderberg; When the epidemiologist Johan Giesecke read the paper, it left him a little puzzled. On any normal day, 275 people die in Sweden, he thought. He’d spent a large part of his life studying just that: where, when, and how people die. The way the world currently thought about death was, to him, completely alien. When … Continue reading Mandates and health outcomes
Vanessa Fuhrmans and Kathryn Dill: As the labor market reorders, more Americans are making the leap from blue-collar jobs and hourly work to “new collar” roles that often involve tech skills and come with better pay and schedules. More than a tenth of Americans in low-paying roles in warehouses, manufacturing, hospitality and other hourly positions … Continue reading Blue-Collar Workers Make the Leap to Tech Jobs, No College Degree Necessary
WILL In recent years, WILL has represented several public-school parents after their local school established policies and procedures that undermined fundamental parental rights to make decisions about their child’s education, healthcare, and overall welfare. AB 963/SB 962 is a response to this common experience for Wisconsin’s public-school parents. Right to review educational materials and access to learning materials: This … Continue reading Notes on K-12 Parental Rights
THURSDAY: Assembly Committee on Education will be hearing testimony on a Parent Bill of Rights. pic.twitter.com/2zPwBJmbwu — WILL (@WILawLiberty) February 9, 2022 Notes: Parent Bill of Rights: In recent years, WILL has represented several public-school parents after their local public schools established policies and procedures that undermined the parent’s rights to make decisions about their … Continue reading Hearing on a proposed Parent bill of rights
Ariana Garcia: Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday evening plans to amend the Texas Constitution with a Parent Bill of Rights if he is re-elected. The proposal follows Abbott’s introduction of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights this week. Abbott publicly signed the bill at an event hosted by the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, where he criticized schools shutting down during the pandemic … Continue reading Texas Gov. Greg Abbott introduces ‘Parental Bill of Rights’ targeting state education system
Dana Goldstein and Noam Scheiber: Few American cities have labor politics as fraught as Chicago’s, where the nation’s third-largest school system shut down this week after teachers’ union members refused to work in person, arguing that classrooms were unsafe amid the Omicron surge. But in a number of other places, the tenuous labor peace that … Continue reading Teacher Unions vs Parents and Children: political commentary
Dr. Amesh Adalja: It was evident almost from day 1 that COVID-19, caused by an efficiently spreading respiratory virus with an animal host, was with us for good. The goal of the public health campaign was not to somehow return the virus magically to bats but to tame the virus and shift its spectrum of … Continue reading ‘Abstinence only’ approach to COVID failed in 2021 — missed opportunity for teaching harm reduction
Taylor Nicole Rogers and Gary Silverman: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month … Continue reading Race and finance: the student loan trap
James Benedict, Anna Wilde Mathews, Tom McGinty and Melanie Evans: To get inside healthcare costs, The Wall Street Journal looked at newly public data from one market: Boston, home to some of the world’s most prominent hospitals. U.S. hospitals for the first time this year had to divulge all their prices under a new federal … Continue reading Three Miles and $400 Apart: Hospital Prices Vary Wildly Even in the Same City
Michelle Fulcher: The emergency is over,’ according to Governor Jared Polis, who explained on Colorado Matters on Friday that vaccines have changed the COVID-19 landscape, rendering masks useful but not required in the state’s fight against the pandemic. Meanwhile, Colorado continues to see a rise in hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated patients. With the state’s healthcare … Continue reading Colorado Gov. Polis leaves mask mandates to local officials, says the state shouldn’t ‘tell people what to wear’
Gunter Kampf: High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing. In the UK it was described that secondary … Continue reading “Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing”
A SoCal school board is way overpaying for its superintendent. More than $600K cash/year plus lots benefits. Even after supe &board are long gone, this shrinking district will continue to pay LIFETIME healthcare for supe &family. That will come from $ meant for tomorrow’s kids. https://t.co/9O91y0ccPS — Marguerite Roza (@MargueriteRoza) November 15, 2021
The lengthy 2020-2021 remote experience that Madison’s K-12 students endured made me wonder how the taxpayer funded school district is performing with online services. I was part of a group that reviewed the District’s acquisition of “Infinite Campus” software in the 2000’s. Having been through many software implementations, I asked the District’s then IT/Chief Information … Continue reading Online Systems and the Madison School District’s Remote Capabilities/Results (infinite Campus)
University of Utah: “The results suggest it is possible for schools to operate safely and in-person without increasing case rates in the community,” says Richard Nelson, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology at University of Utah Health and co-senior author with Westyn Branch-Elliman, M.D., of the VA Boston Healthcare System. “But the flip side is true, … Continue reading Study finds that in much of the US, virtual school did not lower COVID-19 case rates in surrounding communities
Jennifer Calfas: Nearly 40% of U.S. households said they faced serious financial difficulties in recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing problems such as paying utility bills or credit card debt, according to a recent poll. About one-fifth have depleted all of their savings. U.S. households are struggling in many ways over a year into … Continue reading Close to 40% of U.S. Households Say They Face Financial Difficulties as Covid-19 Pandemic Continues
Bretigne Shaffer: But there is a silver lining, and it is this: These governments, and many more around the world, have taken a torch to their own credibility, to their own legitimacy. Never again will any thinking person accept unquestioningly the pronouncements of “public health authorities.” Never again will they turn to CNN, the New … Continue reading “Torching” taxpayer funded Government credibility
Wall Street Journal The U.S. median income for a family of four is about $90,000. Those families would pay 2% of income annually ($1,800) for child care. Taxpayers would pay the rest, roughly $21,000 for two kids in day care, according to estimates by Rachel Greszler of the Heritage Foundation. In wealthy states like Massachusetts, … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Sanders-Biden bill is full of subsidies for the upper middle-class.
David Zweig: At least 12,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 this month, as the country inches through its latest surge in cases. But another worrying statistic is often cited to depict the dangers of this moment: The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States right now is as high as it has been since the beginning of February. It’s even … Continue reading A new study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.
Common Sense Institute: Estimated Expenditures: Homelessness Assistance Programs Within the Metro Denver region, at least $481.2 million is spent annually on shelters, services, emergency response and healthcare for individuals experiencing homelessness. In comparison, Colorado spends $324.5 million on the statewide budget of the Department of Public Safety. Out of the total estimate of $481.2 million, … Continue reading Denver spends 2 to 5X K-12 Spending on Homeless Programs
Collateral Global: The COVID-19 pandemic and restrictive mitigation policies have forced millions of children worldwide into poverty, with devastating effects on their access to education, nutrition, shelter, sanitation, and overall likelihood of survival. Before the pandemic, children were already disproportionately affected by poverty. Despite comprising only 1/3 of the world’s population, over half of those … Continue reading Millions of children worldwide have been forced into poverty, with devastating effects