Health Care
Bigger Pie Forum promotes health policy reforms that empower patients and consumers by encouraging competition, transparency, accountability, and innovation. Our goal is a 21st century health care marketplace that better utilizes technology and new business models to offer consumers more accessible, higher quality care at a more affordable price.
Featured Work
Is That All There Is to a Pandemic*?
Bigger Pie Forum Projects
PERS
Legislative Session 2021
Could Mississippi’s Medical Marijuana Program Go Up In Smoke?
The Fate of Initiative 65 — The Mississippi Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on April 13 to decide the fate of Initiative 65, which was passed by a 74 percent majority of Mississippians to put in place a medical marijuana program in the state.
Is That All There Is to a Pandemic*?
COVID-19 has been labeled a pandemic. It should probably be labeled pandemic* ( to note unnatural – manmade or Batwoman made). It is reported to have caused or to have been involved in 3.5 million deaths to date. That’s about 4/100 of 1% of the world’s 7.9 billion inhabitants today. It wouldn’t register on the Richter scale of historic pandemics – if there were such a thing. But it happened in the age of ubiquitous iPhones and Androids, talking heads, scripted narratives, and social media censorship.
Bat Coming Home To Roost
The Bat Lady is a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. Her name is Dr. Shi Zheng-li . She goes on virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves and does “gain of function” genetic manipulations on coronaviruses to make them more infectious and more deadly to humans. The COVID-19 pandemic may have begun in her lab — which was funded in part by U.S. taxpayers.
Our Lying Eyes
Groucho Marx, when caught in a compromised condition, retorted: “Who you gonna believe — me or your lying eyes?” Although Chico may have actually said it first, it’s attributed to Groucho. And that has become the popular narrative. So it’s become the truth. Kind of like “deaths with COVID-19” have become “deaths from COVID-19” as the coronavirus pandemic has grown. And “positive tests for COVID-19” have become “COVID-19 cases.”
Nocebos and Mass Hysteria
A nocebo effect is the opposite of a placebo effect. A placebo makes you get well because you think you will. A nocebo makes you get sick because you think you will. Both work if you believe authority figures (doctors and experts) who say they work. The mechanism is imaginary or psychological. But the effects are real and physiological.
Doctor or Politician?
A recent analysis of CDC data by Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Genevieve Briand shows that increased deaths “involving” COVID-19 are offset by decreased deaths due to other causes. She finds that total deaths from all causes have not increased due to the virus.