Check out a uncensored video-posting platform called LBRY.
Can’t escape the irony that this is being posted on YouTube.
Category: Telemedicine Trends
Watch “What It’s Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You” on YouTube
Another humorous but insightful perspective from J.P. Sears
Coronavirus—April 2020 Part 6 | ImagineMD
Great 6-part series about COVID19 covering multiple important issues since February 2020.
Part-6 includes a great discussion on importance of estimating, and eventually fine tuning, prevalence of COVID19 in general population so we can accurately interpret antibody serology test results for patients to help them guide decisions about work and family health.
A summary of topics covered in part-6 include:
- Importance of Appropriate Studies
- Should we wear masks
- Should we get tested for antibody to COVID? What do results mean?
- Estimating prevalence of COVID
- The importance of calculating positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPP) as a function of prevalence
Shelter In-Place Care: Another “Box Checked” for the Value of Direct Primary Care
HEADLINE:
FCC Unveils COVID-19 Telehealth Program, Updates Connected Care Pilot
The Federal Communications Commission is using $200 million in funding from the CARES Act to launch a new program to help providers access the broadband resources they need to support telehealth programs.
Wow, the government has discovered remote digital technology medical care! Although, maybe a little late. What would we do without those innovative minds in D.C. ?!?
But there’s a better solution that’s been up and running for more than a decade; private citizens being free to act and chose what services they value. It is a solution which occurred organically when an innovative supply side acted to solve other people’s problems within a cooperative marketplace driven by mutual benefit. It is called Direct Primary Care (DPC). And it is only possible because we still have some semblance of healthcare freedom within our society. No thanks to Washington, D.C.
But step aside, the FCC with money to burn is coming to the rescue after COVID is already in full crisis mode.
Never mind that Direct Primary Care physicians have routinely integrated remote care technology platforms into their practices for a more than a decade. And set aside the fact that revenue in a DPC business model doesn’t rely on office visits (the opposite of social distancing) to trigger a billable encounter, the claim against which is paid out of a grossly over-priced pre-paid 3rd party fund that we call health insurance. Instead, the Direct Primary Care physician is paid to be available to solve problems, answer questions, triage illness/injury, provide treatment and advice via the most appropriate venue for each patient.
And last, no disrespect meant to the media outlet below for featuring this story. They are just reporting the healthcare news, as is their mission.
Is that a Centipede I See in My Capsule?? | MedPage Today
Eban: They knew I was coming. They had let me come in, but I saw a very different world within these plants through whistleblowers. I worked with a lot of whistleblowers who had contacted me — or I had made contact with them — who were showing me documents, showing me photographs, giving me really the sort of gory details of what was happening in these plants and the kinds of crazy decisions that were being made like failing drugs, drugs that had glass particles in them were being approved to be dispensed. Broken down, rusted equipment that was leaving metallic fragments in pills. Those were being dispensed.
Illicit use of ingredients. You can’t just swap ingredients. But they had drugs that were dissolving improperly, so they just haphazardly changed things up to try to get better data to show the FDA. All of this was taking place in a kind of lawless regulatory environment. They’re not afraid of their own regulators. They’re afraid of the FDA, but what they have built is an elaborate system to trick the FDA. Our FDA has all but volunteered to be tricked because we announce our inspections in advance overseas. We give 3 months’ notice. They send in data fabrication teams.
Should access to life-saving medicines be determined by economic evaluations? | TheHill
“My opportunity finally came. In April 2018, I was one of a few hundred cystic fibrosis patients to dose in a pivotal phase III clinical trial to evaluate a new drug designed to correct CFTR, the dysfunctional protein responsible for CF. The medication, two pills in the morning, and one at night worked almost immediately.
Within a few hours, the viscosity of my usually thick, sticky mucus changed; within a week, the constant cough I had lived with for my entire life nearly vanished, and within a month, my pulmonary function tests skyrocketed. I could finally breathe.
Instead of heading towards end-stage illness, disability income, and an end to my fight with cystic fibrosis, Trikafta, as the drug came to be named, saved my life.
A disturbing trend is washing over the United States, though. Insurers are using economic analyses based on a discriminatory cost-effectiveness metric called Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY) as negotiating leverage to limit access to life-changing medications.
A 2018 article in Health Affairs said, “QALY calculations inherently privilege treatments that extend the lives of those who can be restored to perfect health, and disadvantage the many who seek life-extending treatments despite having a disability or chronic condition that is not curable.”
But, QALY is not adequately able to quantify what happened in my own life — my journey from near end-stage illness and no hope for a future to correctly managed CF and entrance into an elite graduate program. Living in a world where I would not have had the chance to dose Trikafta sends a shiver down my spine.
That world, however, has existed in countries where QALY has been used to justify not covering CFTR modulators for people with CF. In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes QALY calculations to determine which medications are covered by the nation’s National Healthcare Service. In 2016, NICE decided that Orkambi, a previous CFTR modulator iteration, was not cost-effective for its citizens.”
The Problem – Center For Humane Technology
The extractive attention economy is tearing apart our shared social fabric.
The companies that created social media and mobile tech have benefited our lives enormously. But even with the best intentions, they are under intense pressure to compete for attention, creating invisible harms for society.
Today’s tech platforms are caught in a race to the bottom of the brain stem to extract human attention. It’s a race we’re all losing.
The result: addiction, social isolation, outrage, misinformation, and political polarization.
These aren’t disconnected issues. They are part of human downgrading.
https://humanetech.com/problem/
Preferred Pronouns or Prison | PragerU
“The State can’t force people to say things they don’t believe.”
Justice Robert Jackson – West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette (1943)
