About ten times a year, I send an email to 35k+ people on five things to read. Below is the email from December 2018 (the Jan 2019 will come shortly). If you like these, subscribe to Five Links.

here are five links worth reading/viewing (this month we are focused on health care) … 

A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the Industry Is Rattled by Peter Loftus
Five Links reader John Arnold has put $100 million behind efforts to curb drug prices.

Health care prices do not play the role most people believe by Random Critical Analysis
Interesting paper that suggests the problem in U.S. healthcare is the demand for services, not the expensive prices. (HT Alex Danco)

Melatonin: Much More than You Wanted to Know by Scott Alexander
As you know, an article from Slate Star Codex is almost mandatory in Five Links. 

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers by Atul Gawande
Like all Atul Gawande writings, this is incredibly insightful.  But like all Atul Gawande writings, this is also 3 times as long as it needs to be (so caution). 

Decline of cancer and heart disease (tweetstorm) by Aaron Mitchell
More and more, the most interesting “articles” are being published as tweetstorms. This is one of them.  (HT Matt Clifford)

Note: after reading 50+ articles (+1 book) on healthcare In November… my take-aways:
+ there is no 80/20 rule to fix U.S. healthcare.
+ there are a series of fixes that each improve the healthcare system by 2-5%.
+ so fixing U.S. healthcare is going to be really hard because no one thing will have a big effect.

In addition — Some books I read since the last Five Links:

Health Care Handbook by Elisabeth Askin and Nathan Moore
(HT Travis May)

How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims  
(HT Brian Davis)

God is in the Crowd by Tal Keinan
(Tal is a Five Links reader)

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
(HT Lauren Spiegel)