Kaiser fakes diagnoses
DOJ joins lawsuit against Kaiser’s medicare advantage plan for embezzlement and the FDA approves Bayer’s Kerendia for end-stage kidney failure.
Kaiser’s Medicare Advantage Plan is brought to court and the DOJ joins the lawsuit against them
Kaiser Permanente’s Medicare advantage plan is once again under scrutiny for embezzling from the Medicare fund. The DOJ is now joining the lawsuit against them, specifically citing them for false risk coding of their patients. Basically, the evidence shows that Kaiser pressured its doctors to write false information about treatments its patients were receiving such as saying someone is undergoing cancer treatment when their cancer was treated a year ago. Since 2018, Medicare Advantage plan payments by the federal fund to Medicare Advantage plan providers, including Kaiser, United Health, Anthem, etc… have increased by a whopping $6 billion.
Exposition: Medicare advantage plans are usually healthcare plans offered through private insurers whom the government compensates whenever you get Medicare treatments. The main advantage, you don’t directly have to deal with the government.
The issue: Kaiser’s Medicare Advantage plan is considered the gold standard for them all. This supposedly top-notch, highly recommendable plan is actually just embezzling public funds and lining the pockets of its upper brass…
Sadly, Kaiser isn’t fessing up and is instead gearing up for a court battle. When they inevitably get off with a penalty worth less than 10% of what they embezzled, we’ll let you know.
For more information and full-length articles, you can check out these sources below!
Kerendia: A drug to treat end-stage kidney disease
The FDA recently approved the drug Kerendia (or Finerenone) by Bayer. Kerendia is a drug with a specific application, it is used to treat end-stage kidney failure induced by Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure with almost 40% of type 2 diabetes patients having end-stage kidney failure. Some estimate that there are 5-7 million cases of kidney failure worldwide.
Diabetes is the disease of excess sugar accumulation in the bloodstream. However, when glucose is detected in the blood, your kidney reabsorbs water from your urine to prevent the glucose from leaving the body. People with end-stage kidney failure reuptake way too much water. Kerendia, by decreasing that reuptake of water, reduces the workload of the kidney. However, it is important to point out that this drug does not treat kidney failure but delays the progression of the disease. We still need a more permanent solution. Currently, Kerendia is only approved for treating Type 2 diabetes. Even though kidney failure is common in Type 1 diabetes, the drug is not approved to treat these patients.
In its clinical trial, 2827 patients were treated with Kerendia, and 2831 were treated with a placebo over 2 years. About 32% of patients reported adverse side effects with the drug but that stat is thrown off by the fact 34% of the placebo patients also reported adverse effects. 30% is usually about right for placebo groups experiencing adverse reactions and is the reason all good scientific studies have control groups.
Overall, even though Kerendia has a very limited current application, it could potentially be used in other applications too since the greater class of drugs it belongs to is commonly used to treat hypertension in addition to kidney failure. Though before that, it would be important to address the risk of low blood pressure and elevated sodium levels in the blood first.
Safety Data Sheet (Including dosage and administration data)
Health & Wellness
Stop using your phone 30 minutes before bed if you want to have a good night's rest. If you are reading this 30 minutes before your planned bedtime, put it down damn it. Our newsletter isn’t more important than your sleep and wellbeing.
According to this study, blue light specifically, impairs sleep and focus. Although it isn’t only blue light that messes with your circadian rhythm. Any light can do it but blue light tends to be the worst and is also known to kill cells in your retina so you may want to turn your phone, tablet, and laptops night shift blue light filter on… for the entire day…
Unless you’re a photographer or video editor and constantly working on yellow screens will mess up your sense of digital color science.
Things you can do instead of sitting on your phone at night:
A skin cleansing routine. Apply a face mask and put cucumbers or watermelon peels on your eyes
Meditate
Meditate with a face mask
Do a nightly stretching routine from a printout
Study Highlight
A study found that Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex reduces the chances of mosquitoes attacking potential hosts and mating. Mosquitoes listening to this song also attacked hosts later and less frequently than their non-music hearing peers. Not sure if the scientists were just attacking electronic dance music or not but it would appear that the loud and high pitch music can act as a half-decent mosquito repellent.
Lesson: Raves fight mosquitos?
Featured Fake News
Ahh yes, the classic masks do not work. So a tweet is circulating around citing a paper that says that COVID-19 can be transmitted by aerosols and therefore masks are ineffective since they can’t stop aerosols.
Now while we can take a moment to appreciate the attempt to cite published research, the author was simply relying on no one opening up the study since the paper ends by encouraging people to wear masks.
This paper was trying to convey that certain types of masks like N95 masks are able to stop aerosols to a greater extent and that other masks like surgical masks prevent the virus from being expelled by the wearer but offer lower protection from aerosols.
Besides, COVID is mostly transmitted by droplets of saliva and mucus. Aerosolized COVID isn’t the only form of transmission and all masks were able to substantially hamper droplets.
Regardless, it is crucial to wear masks to stop the pandemic since any kind of mask will offer some kind of protection. Not wearing a surgical mask because it can’t stop aerosols from getting through is like not wearing a seatbelt while driving.