Category: Health Care
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Check out My Political-Economy-of-Healthcare Webinar
I’ll be talking about the political economy of healthcare in Virginia 7:00 p.m. Wednesday (tomorrow) in a webinar hosted by Your Freedom Hub. Bacon’s Rebellion readers recalling the posts that Jim Sherlock and I have written about the power of hospital cartels will find the subject matter familiar. But I’ll be previewing some new data…
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How Employers Must Prevent COVID, Or Else
By Steve Haner The first thing every employer in Virginia needs to understand about the state’s new COVID-19 temporary workplace standard (here) is it is universal. It applies to every workplace, public and private, for-profit and non-profit, with 10,000 workers or two. The rules are the same, “one size fits all,” without regard to the…
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More Fallout from the COVID Shutdown
by James A. Bacon A least 5.4 million Americans lost their medical insurance when they lost their jobs to the COVID-19 epidemic between February and May, says Attorney General Mark R. Herring in a press release issued today. In Virginia, he adds, it is estimated that 14% of adults lack health insurance. Nine hundred thousand…
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No More Shutdowns Without Detailed Data
by Kerry Dougherty Here we go. Again. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down much of his state’s economy yesterday. He closed indoor dining, churches, (they’re always the first to go), hair salons, barbershops, wineries, fitness centers, etc. I’m sure it’s just coincidental that this happened shortly before the Golden State’s numbers began to climb last month:…
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VCU Study Finds 30,000 “Spillover” Deaths from COVID-19 Epidemic
by James A. Bacon In March and April this year, the COVID-19 epidemic resulted in approximately 87,000 more deaths in the United States than the average for those months, concludes a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 65% were directly attributable to the virus. The other 35% was…
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Virginia COVID Cases Up, Deaths Down
by Kerry Dougherty Welcome to Day 121 of 15 Days to Slow the Spread. Seems like just yesterday that we watched, aghast, as Italy’s hospitals collapsed under the weight of those sick and dying from COVID-19. It was late February. If we didn’t act we faced the same fate, experts said. And so, in mid-March,…
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Inequity Accounting for Hispanic COVID-19 Cases
by Carol J. Bova Last week Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, wrote a letter to Governor Ralph Northam decrying the high rate of COVID-19 infection in Virginia’s Hispanic population. She blamed “longstanding and systemic factors, such as disparate access to information, testing, and treatment.” Jim Bacon responded that Virginia Department of Health (VDH) data…
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Virginia Hospitals Rank High Nationally (They Are Not the Ones You Would Assume!)
By Dick Hall-Sizemore In a new national ranking of hospitals, two Virginia hospitals are included in the Top 20 Hospitals in the country. Furthermore, the Commonwealth’s two major teaching hospitals are in the list of the 50 best teaching hospitals. Finally, one Virginia hospital was one of the 100 best safety net hospitals. The two…
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Are Hispanics Victims of “Inequities” in COVID-19 Epidemic?
by James A. Bacon Hispanics make up 9% of Virginia’s population but 43% of the state’s COVID-19 cases. So, it seems a not-unreasonable thing for Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, a candidate for governor, to call upon Governor Ralph Northam to increase funding for outreach over Spanish-language media to build public awareness about the…
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State Board of Health Regulations are Fundamentally Flawed
by James C. Sherlock The Northam administration has a robust program for regulation review. It is time to use it to totally overhaul Virginia’s healthcare regulations. Healthcare facilities and providers in Virginia are subject to dueling regulations — one set for state licensure and another for Medicare/Medicaid certification. Virginia’s regulations in these cases are not…
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The COVID Surge — Virginia Hangs Tight
by Verhaal Kenner As of July 1st, Virginia is now in “Phase III” reopening as our state’s COVID cases seem to be almost holding mostly steady despite record daily infections in a few hot spots such as Hampton Roads. Phase III means the reopening of non-essential retail and restaurants (with six-foot table spacing). The complete …
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Why Is COVID-19 Trending Down in Virginia?
by James A. Bacon As the COVID-19 virus continues to recede in Virginia, I’ve abandoned my day-to-day coverage of the numbers, but I think it’s still worthwhile to post periodic updates. The good news for Virginia as seen in the chart above, taken from the Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard, is that the number…
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Housing Grants Just a COVID Relief Rounding Error
By Steve Haner Will $50 million be enough? Will that get all the Virginians who have fallen behind due to COVID-19 square on their rent or mortgage payments? Or is that amount, in a relief program now fleshed out by the Northam Administration, merely a start? There is a hint on the program’s web page,…
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COVID-19 Update: Mixed Signals on Viral Spread
Here are three COVID-19 trends in Virginia worth watching: The seven-day moving average of the test-positive rate ticked upwards yesterday for the first time in more than a month; Hospital utilization by COVID-19 patients dipped to the lowest point since the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association began tracking the data in early April; and It…
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Uh, Oh, COVID-19 Metrics No Longer Improving
The bad news from recent COVID-19 statistics is that the numbers aren’t getting better. Virginia has hit a plateau in the number of confirmed cases, as seen in the chart above, which shows the seven-day moving average in the number of confirmed cases. To some degree, the tick upwards in COVID-19 cases may reflect increased…