Sometimes the blog posts write themselves from contrasting newspaper headlines.
New York Times
New Gene-Therapy Treatments Will Carry Whopping Price Tags
By GINA KOLATA September 11, 2017
Emily Whitehead, the first pediatric patient to receive the gene-therapy treatment Kymriah, which put her leukemia into remission. The treatment has a $475,000 price tag, raising questions about how patients and insurers will pay. ...
One drug, to prevent blindness in those with a rare genetic disease, for example, is expected to cost between $700,000 and $900,000 per patient on average,..
Washington Post
The dam is breaking on Democrats’ embrace of single-payer
By Aaron Blake September 12 at 9:39 AM
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) became the fourth co-sponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-Vt.) “Medicare for all” health-care bill Monday. In doing so, he joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.).
What do those four senators have in common? Well, they just happen to constitute four of the eight most likely 2020 Democratic presidential nominees, according to the handy list I put out Friday.
Update: Gillibrand just signed on to Sanders's "Medicare for all" bill. So now 5 of my top 8 potential 2020 Democratic nominees have now come out for the bill -- before it is even introduced. "Health care should be a right, not a privilege, so I will be joining Senator Bernie Sanders as a cosponsor on his Medicare-for-All legislation," Gillibrand said.Hint. Budget constraints? Hint 2: get ready to start making lots of noise if you want treatment.
By the way, let us watch for the crucial buzzword question. Does "single payer" mean there is a single payer that anyone can use -- but you're free to buy and sell your own insurance on top of that, hopefully deregulated since there is no need to regulate anymore, everyone has access to medicare for all? Or does "single payer" mean there is a single payer that everyone must use -- private insurance, private practice, just paying cash illegal, to cross-subsidize the system? I fear the latter. We'll see.
The previous champion was stories on the same page in WSJ, roughly ``self driving trucks coming soon'' and ``shortage of truck drivers.'' I lost the link.
