What do you want to see from Sick Note?
Happy New Year! Insert your favorite “2020 sucked” joke here. (It really did, though.) If you missed it over Christmas, last week I ran an interview with Stephanie Williams, a woman in Georgia who was hospitalized with Covid-19, and struggled to pay her bills because she had no paid sick leave. Make sure to check that out; this is the kind of Sick Note content you’ll see every week in 2021.
Today’s email is short, and contains one request: Tell me what you want to see from this newsletter in 2021.
The plan for Sick Note is at least two editions a week—one interview and one round-up of healthcare news. (You can read more about what this newsletter is all about here, if you missed it.) I’ll usually try to send an additional email, with commentary on some piece of healthcare news, another interview, or something else, each week.
If you’re receiving this email, it means you signed up or even subscribed already, and thanks so much for doing that. Since you’re in on the ground floor, my early bird crowd, I want know what you want to see from this newsletter—specific topics or themes you’d like me to cover, or types of content. Are you interested in audio or podcasting? More personal writing about my struggle with migraines? Live streaming events or discussions with healthcare experts? Something I haven’t thought of at all? Let me know! You can just reply to this email, or email sicknotenewsletter@gmail.com. I’d love to hear your ideas.
Have a safe and fun New Year’s Eve, and I’ll see you next week for the first real Sick Note.
Not sure if you will see this since it’s February, but I would love to see something about people going on game shows to cover medical costs.
The thing that has fascinated me most about healthcare since I got into the work force in 2006 is the proliferation of HSA-based plans and the sort of polite assumption we all have that it's a fully safe and permanent way of saving medical expenses. Perhaps cynically, I'm guessing that all goes out the window when the Nü-Republicans try to get unused HSAs drained like Visa Gift Cards in 2050. Any chance there could be some investigation into how HSA accounts function, whether we can expect them to get worse with time and who is lobbying on the behalf of those lucky enough to stuff one of those babies with 5+ figures of money that they think is being kept safe for whenever they might need it?