Breaking Four Trillion
POLICY Breaking Four Trillion U.S. healthcare spending reached $4.1 trillion ($12,530 per person) in 2020, increasing 9.7% year-over-year. What’s particularly interesting about these stats compared to previous years is where spending increased and decreased. The DeetsHealthcare expenditures made up around 20% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 compared to 17.6% in 2019. Overall, the country’s GDP declined…
Read MoreMedicare Telehealth Balloons
HEALTH TECH Medicare Telehealth Balloons Telehealth use among Medicare Part B beneficiaries ballooned 63-fold from around 840,000 virtual visits in 2019 to 52.7 million in 2020. The burning question: is telehealth here to stay? Loosen Up a Bit, Will Ya? At the pandemic’s onset, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) loosened restrictions on Medicare fee-for-service…
Read MoreCVS x Microsoft 🤝
HEALTH TECH CVS x Microsoft 🤝 CVS Health and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with a unique focus: “Developing innovative solutions to help consumers improve their health, while empowering over 300,000 CVS Health employees including frontline workers with tools to better serve more than 100 million people.” The focus of this partnership has a lot of buzzwords (empower,…
Read MoreThree Retailers and an Opioid Crisis
PUBLIC HEALTH Three Retailers and an Opioid Crisis A federal jury found Walgreens, CVS Health and Walmart responsible for fueling the opioid crisis in two Ohio counties, the first time drug retailers are being held responsible for the decades-long opioid crisis. The DeetsThe jurors found the three big drug retailers contributed to a public nuisance by selling and distributing…
Read MoreCVS to Close 900 Stores, Beef Up HealthHubs
BUSINESS CVS to Close 900 Stores, Beef Up HealthHubs CVS announced it would close around 900 stores over the next three years to adapt to its growing number of customers purchasing goods online. The company will focus more on its digital services and HealthHubs — I just hope they digitize their pages-long receipts. The DeetsThe…
Read MoreJ&J Saved from Paying $465M for Opioid Crisis
PUBLIC HEALTH J&J Saved from Paying $465M for Opioid Crisis Oklahoma’s Supreme Court tossed out Johnson & Johnson’s $465 million opioid lawsuit. This ruling is a blow to the Oklahoma communities deeply impacted by the opioid crisis, but a win for the opioid drug maker facing thousands of opioid-related lawsuits. The DeetsIn 2019, an Oklahoma District judge…
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