The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly - 1/22/24
The ongoing saga…
The Great – At least the healthcare community is creating jobs!! [SEE above commentary]. The only problem is that the percent of GDP health care spend is nearly 20% – which is not so good…
The Good – Cigarette smoking among youth since 1997 has dropped consistently and has now reached historic lows of only 2.1% of youth smoking!!! That represents a 93% reduction from the smoking peak in 1997 when 28.3% of youth smoked cigarettes.
The Bad – The ongoing war of survival for the people of Ukraine and the inability for the nations of the world to put a stop to the humanitarian crisis that is present in Gaza as a result of the ongoing war between the Israelis and Hamas.
The More Than Bad – The #2 recipient of the 7th Annual Shkreli Award given to the "most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare," goes to former CEO – Lloyd Dean – of CommonSpirit Health (a NFP, Catholic health care system - nonetheless) for paying him a $35.5 million compensation package in 2021. The award is determined by a diverse panel. Whoa!! I really missed the boat as the former CMO for a predecessor organization to CommonSpirit…but, then, again – we actually had discussions about the pay differential of executives compared to front-line workers – and, what to do about it. But, that was in the day…
The Ugly – The inaction of the 2022-2023 Congress [SEE above commentary] portends an ugly time in America…
