Category: Healthcare

CalPERS Long Term Care Program Bleeds Policyholders Dry via 10X Higher Premiums, Gross Mismanagement, Bad Faith Dealing

Mary Pat Campbell
CalPERS Long Term Care Program Bleeds Policyholders Dry via 10X Higher Premiums, Gross Mismanagement, Bad Faith Dealing

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To justify the rate increases, CalPERS asserts that there is nothing problematic with the program, other than the usual suspects of low interest rates and unexpected policyholder behavior, issues that all long-term care providers have faced. But that is, at best, a half-truth.

While all other long-term care providers have faced the same challenges, there is no evidence that any other insurer in the nation has responded with premium increases like CalPERS. For example, the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program has raised rates as much as 150%. For commercial policies, premiums rose up to 75% for UNUM Group in some states, while in California premiums for Mutual of Omaha policy premiums rose 20%, Transamerica premiums rose 25%, and Thrivent premiums rose about 37%.

During the past two decades, roughly the timeframe of the policies subject to the lawsuit, inflation has risen 49% and the cost of long-term care services about 120%. The chart below shows actual policy rates and the initial policy rate along with inflation and long-term care trends.

Author(s): Yves Smith, Lawrence Grossman

Publication Date: 14 May 2021

Publication Site: naked capitalism

CDC’s slow, cautious messaging on Covid-19 seems out of step with the moment, public health experts say

Mary Pat Campbell
CDC’s slow, cautious messaging on Covid-19 seems out of step with the moment, public health experts say

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When the CDC issued new guidelines recently on when people still need to wear masks, the guidelines were seen as so conservative that they prompted a primetime rant on “The Daily Show.”

“I know science is difficult … but who’s running messaging at the CDC?” asked the show’s host, Trevor Noah.

Some public health experts are asking the same question. Most experts interviewed for this story say the agency has struggled to take advantage of the latest scientific findings to communicate as rapidly as possible with the American public. And when the guidance is issued, it tends to be overly cautious.

….

Still, public health officials say the conservative nature of the agency’s approach to Covid is a marked departure from how it deals with other major public health issues, like HIV and opioid use disorder.

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Multiple experts told STAT that they fear the CDC’s recommendations are becoming irrelevant for most Americans. They worry, too, that guidelines, like the CDC’s advice on masking, so seriously underplay the benefits of getting vaccinated that they risk dissuading people from getting a shot in the first place.

Author(s): Nicholas Florko

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: Stat News

A Misleading C.D.C. Number

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html

Excerpt:

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines last month for mask wearing, it announced that “less than 10 percent” of Covid-19 transmission was occurring outdoors. Media organizations repeated the statistic, and it quickly became a standard description of the frequency of outdoor transmission.

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That benchmark “seems to be a huge exaggeration,” as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation.

Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving.

Author(s): David Leonhardt

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: NY Times

The Few Sentences That Explain Much of What Went Wrong With Our Pandemic Response

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.theinsight.org/p/the-few-sentences-that-explain-much

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Why did it take so long to accept that SARS-CoV-2 was being transmitted through aerosols, respiratory particles that are small enough to remain suspended in the air, rather than through short-range respiratory droplets that could not travel more than a few feet because of their (bigger) size?

The reasons for this delay go back more than a century, to the fight against (incorrect but prevalent) theories that blame miasma—noxious odors, especially from rotting organic material—for diseases. While trying to counter erroneous but millenia-long folk-beliefs, some of the founders of public health and the field of infectious control of diseases around the world made key errors and conflations around the turn of the 20th century. These errors essentially froze into tradition and dogma that went unchanged and uncorrected for more than a century, until a pandemic forced our hand.

Author(s): Zeynep Tufekci

Publication Date: 7 May 2021

Publication Site: Insight at substack

Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html

Excerpt:

But clear evidence doesn’t easily overturn tradition or overcome entrenched feelings and egos. John Snow, often credited as the first scientific epidemiologist, showed that a contaminated well was responsible for a 1854 London cholera epidemic by removing the suspected pump’s handle and documenting how the cases plummeted afterward. Many other scientists and officials wouldn’t believe him for 12 years, when the link to a water source showed up again and became harder to deny. (He died years earlier.)

Similarly, when the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis realized the importance of washing hands to protect patients, he lost his job and was widely condemned by disbelieving colleagues. He wasn’t always the most tactful communicator, and his colleagues resented his brash implication that they were harming their patients (even though they were). These doctors continued to kill their patients through cross-contamination for decades, despite clear evidence showing how death rates had plummeted in the few wards where midwives and Dr. Semmelweis had succeeded in introducing routine hand hygiene. He ultimately died of an infected wound.

Author(s): Zeynep Tufekci

Publication Date: 7 May 2021

Publication Site: New York Times

Covid ‘Doesn’t Discriminate by Age’: Serious Cases on the Rise in Younger Adults

Mary Pat Campbell
Covid ‘Doesn’t Discriminate by Age’: Serious Cases on the Rise in Younger Adults

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About 32% of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated, but the vast majority are people older than 65 — a group that was prioritized in the initial phase of the vaccine rollout.

Although new infections are gradually declining nationwide, some regions have contended with a resurgence of the coronavirus in recent months — what some have called a “fourth wave” — propelled by the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, which is estimated to be somewhere between 40% and 70% more contagious.

As many states ditch pandemic precautions, this more virulent strain still has ample room to spread among the younger population, which remains broadly susceptible to the disease.

Author(s): Will Stone

Publication Date: 4 May 2021

Publication Site: Kaiser Health News

Covid-19 Vaccinations Are Slowing, So Officials Target Markets, Schools

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-vaccinations-are-slowing-so-officials-target-markets-schools-11620044791

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As demand wanes, states, municipalities and healthcare providers are trying everything from one-on-one education in nontraditional locations to incentives including a free drink and cash.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said recently the state would offer a $100 savings bond to residents aged 16 to 35 who receive a vaccination. The state had been an early leader in vaccinations.

In Detroit, $50 prepaid debit cards are being offered to drivers who take a city resident for a shot. In Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont rolled out a campaign where some restaurants will give a free drink to anyone who shows a vaccination card.

Author(s): Melanie Grayce West, Talal Ansari

Publication Date: 3 May 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Measuring the COVID-19 Policy Response Around the World

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://freopp.org/measuring-the-covid-19-policy-response-around-the-world-2e37a7a97bc8

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In the U.S., 38% of all deaths from COVID-19 have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities that house only 0.6% of the U.S. population. The failure to protect this population is not only a problem in the U.S., however; a survey of international countries found similar results.

Indeed, among 22 countries reporting care home fatalities, the U.S. sits squarely in the middle in terms of the share of fatalities occurring in care homes. Among WIHI countries, Canada (80%) and Australia (75%) had the highest concentration of fatalities in nursing homes, whereas Singapore (11%) and Hungary (23%) the lowest.

While Ireland reported a care home fatality share of 56%, its true share is closer to Canada’s, because Ireland, Finland, New Zealand, and Norway do not report deaths of care home residents who die outside of long-term care facilities. In other countries, roughly one-quarter of COVID-19 deaths of care home residents occur in hospitals and other external locations.

Author(s): Avik Roy

Publication Date: 5 April 2021

Publication Site: FREOPP

U.S. Lifts Pause, Will Restart J&J Vaccinations with Warning

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-should-restart-jj-vaccinations-with-warning-cdc-advisory-group-says/

Excerpt:

The United States will resume Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccinations after health officials lifted an 11-day pause on the shots at the recommendation of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Friday.

The pause in inoculations was triggered by concerns over six cases of a rare blood clot that occurred out of more than 7 million people who had received the vaccine in the U.S.

The panel voted 10 to 4 to recommend restarting the vaccinations, saying the benefits of the shot outweigh the rare risk of blood clots. However, the group suggested that the vaccine include a warning about the increased risk of the very rare but severe blood clots.

Author(s): Brittany Bernstein

Publication Date: 23 April 2021

Publication Site: National Review

Pfizer Identifies Fake Covid-19 Shots Abroad as Criminals Exploit Vaccine Demand

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-identifies-fake-covid-19-shots-abroad-as-criminals-exploit-vaccine-demand-11619006403

Excerpt:

Fake shots for the pandemic can be easy to distinguish from real ones, experts said, because legitimate ones can be found for now sold only to governments, making any shots for sale on the internet counterfeit and potentially harmful.

Police in China and South Africa last month seized thousands of doses of counterfeit Covid-19 vaccines in warehouses and manufacturing plants, arresting dozens of people, according to the international police agency Interpol. Mexico also is investigating a shipment of some 6,000 doses of purported Sputnik vaccine from Russia, which were seized from a private plane headed to Honduras in March.

The Russia Direct Investment Fund, which leads efforts to market the vaccine internationally, said an analysis of photographs of the seized batch “suggests that it is a fake.” The Mexican Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the matter and declined to comment further. Authorities haven’t determined whether the vaccines are genuine.

For months, agents from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, an investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, have been investigating fraud related to the Covid-19 pandemic globally, recovering $48 million of phony masks, personal protective equipment and other products. Last fall, investigators shifted their focus to include Covid-19 vaccines that were nearing potential clearance by regulators, beginning with online scams. They have removed 30 websites and seized 74 web domains, according to IPR Center officials.

Author(s): Jared S. Hopkins, José de Córdoba

Publication Date: 21 April 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

First Dose of Chinese Covid-19 Vaccine Offers Little Protection, Chile Learns

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-dose-of-chinese-covid-19-vaccine-offers-little-protection-chile-learns-11618775502

Excerpt:

Across Chile — which has mounted one of the world’s most rapid vaccination campaigns using the vaccine made by Chinese drugmaker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. — health authorities are scrambling to deal with a surge in new infections and deaths.

More than 7.6 million people, half of Chile’s adult population, have received at least one vaccine dose, most made by the Chinese drugmaker, making the country a testing ground for a vaccine Beijing is supplying to countries across the developing world.

The problem, public-health officials say, was that people in general overestimated the effectiveness of the vaccine after only one of the two recommended doses and moved to ease up on pandemic-control restrictions too soon.

“With one dose, we know the protection is very weak,” said Claudia Cortes, an infectious-disease expert at the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago, where about 10% of the Covid-19 patients at her hospital have received one shot. “It was not clearly explained that you need two doses — that you need to wait.”

Author(s): Ryan Dube

Publication Date: 18 April 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

India’s Covid-19 crisis has gone from bad to catastrophic in just a fortnight

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://qz.com/india/1998394/how-indias-covid-19-second-wave-worsened-in-just-a-fortnight/

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In just two weeks, India’s second wave of Covid-19 has become disastrous.

The country, which was reporting less than 15,000 cases a day just last month, has been seeing over 200,000 Covid-19 infections a day since April 15. Yesterday (April 19), India reported 273,810 new Covid-19 infections and 1,619 deaths—both highest single-day spikes. That takes the active Covid-19 caseload tally up to nearly 2 million.

Author(s): Manavi Kapur

Publication Date: 19 April 2021

Publication Site: Quartz