Hi everyone. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz Podcast, a weekly show where I usually interview healthcare leaders about their lives and careers. This week I'm going to switch things up a little bit with a solo episode about some healthcare doings over the recent week or so. I'll give my perspective on four topics. Number one, the ban or not on menthol cigarettes. Second, how the Federal Trade Commission is trying to improve competition in health care. Third, my concern about mental health of Jewish college students. And finally, the ban or not of TikTok.
Well, the first one concerns mentholated cigarettes. Cigarette companies like to add menthol to cigarettes. It makes them less harsh. There's a minty flavoring and a cooling sensation, and that's often used in order to make it easier for people to start smoking. It's not so harsh. You don't get turned off by it right away, but over time it's even worse, because it turns out that menthol makes nicotine extra addictive and there's definitely targeting to at-risk communities. So more than 80% of black smokers use menthol cigarettes, compared with about 30% of white smokers, and this has been a result of actually a calculated campaign over the decades. Well, the FDA has proposed a ban on menthol in cigarettes and the public health consensus is that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the coming decades. However, the Biden administration just announced that they're postponing this ban indefinitely in order to study it more. It's pretty clear that the reason for this is politics. Biden has historically done great among Black voters, but he's worried about any reduction in the Black vote this election year. And it turns out that if you take something away from people who are addicted to it, they aren't necessarily happy about it. So he's making that calculation.
Now, what does it mean? Well, some states can actually can take away the right to sell cigarettes with menthol. In my state of Massachusetts, you're not allowed to sell methylated cigarettes, and the same thing in California, and there's a number of municipalities that have banned them as well. I do think that there's even a better approach than specifically banning menthol cigarettes, and that is to ban people born after a certain age from buying tobacco at all. My town of Brookline, Massachusetts, is actually the first one to do that, not even so long ago. They have a ban on the sale of tobacco for anybody born after January 1st 2000. That's been followed by others, I understand, in recent months, so I think that could actually be an approach that could be tried at the national level, not with menthol cigarettes specifically, but more generally. I do think that if Biden wins, you're going to see this menthol cigarette ban go back into effect.
Well, number two the Federal Trade Commission is trying to improve competition across the economy. There are a couple of recent announcements. One is the ban on non-compete agreements. Now, this will be challenged in the court, but the FTC is moving to get rid of those non-compete agreements in order to increase competition and job mobility. And job mobility. It turns out that this actually affects a lot of people in healthcare, although we might often think about it related to tech companies or others where there's a lot of IP in the job. But a lot of physicians and other healthcare workers are subject to non-compete agreements, which means that they can't leave their practice and go practice at another nearby practice. So if they do leave, they end up going a long, long way away, and this definitely tends to hold down competition. Dialysis clinics in particular are notorious for having these sort of non-competes. So I think it's a good idea to get rid of non-competes in general and specifically, healthcare is going to benefit quite a bit.
Another one that I thought was interesting is an announcement FTC is looking into algorithms which may be enabling price fixing. There are a lot of local monopolies in healthcare on the provider side in particular. Of course, it's illegal to meet in order to fix prices. But companies organizations have always found other ways to do. It have a favorite one which was way back, probably a little before 2000,. When big players were looking to buy the Spectrum in order to offer cellular service. They had simultaneous open bidding. They were just bidding on an area code by area code basis, and the bidders actually sent messages to one another by having some like the area code at the end. So they'd be bidding, you know, $100 million, $100 million, $213. So it showed that they wanted the 213 area code and there was a study that showed that those that did this it actually affected a lot of the different components of the spectrum. They ended up paying a lot less and getting about 40% of the market. So not the exact same thing that's happening now. But what we're seeing is the FTC is concerned that if companies are using the same algorithm in order to set prices, they're going to end up with identical prices because they're using the same inputs and the same approach. Now, of course, healthcare is complicated by third-party reimbursement, so this isn't going reimbursement, so this is going to have a limited impact on what people actually pay. But I do think it's interesting that they specifically cited algorithms as it relates to health care prices.
So that's number two concern about the mental health impact on Jewish students at colleges, in particular, based on some of the protests and encampments that are going on related to the current war in the Middle East. I think, in particular, you know, israel is being wrongly accused of genocide in Gaza. That's a territory that it unilaterally withdrew from in 2005. It's only there now because of Hamas's October 7th invasion and hostage taking. But Israel itself is actually facing enemies that have openly expressed their genocidal intent, including Hamas and Iran, and they are gaining strength from the support they're getting from US students and others who should know better. And maybe they do know better, I think, from a messaging standpoint, hamas's use of healthcare facilities and human shelters work even beyond their imagination and that, as Jews and Zionists, we're getting a foretaste of what it would mean if Israel were to fall. The US leadership has been good on this. I think Israelis would be wise to oust Netanyahu and restore a government that was similar to the prior one, which focused on a broad religious, ethnic and political spectrum that reflects the country overall, and certainly possibly be concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, while also supporting Israel's duty to defend itself. So I'm concerned about the impact this is having on Jewish college students at the moment, on their mental health in particular.
My fourth item is the TikTok ban or not. It seems as though TikTok is going to be up for a forced sale within 12 months or so. That was part of the recently passed foreign aid package and it really could happen. If it does happen, that could have an impact on public health. Positive impacts could have on public health is really. It's all based on reducing the Chinese government's ability to manipulate our society. There's a lot of misinformation on health within TikTok. There's a lot of anxiety and depression that especially our younger folks are experiencing experiencing from their time on social media except listening to podcasts, of course, which is healthy. There's harmful behaviors that are promoted and then, just in general, concerns about what the Chinese are doing or might do in terms of government control. There is actually precedent for something like this Grindr, which is an LGBTQ dating app, was actually purchased in 2018 by a Chinese company and then, in 2020, there was a forced sale because the US government was concerned about US government employees and military members who are on Grindr, whose information might be available to Chinese government, which might blackmail them or do something else with that information. That would be problematic. It also may be that going after a Chinese company is easier than going after Facebook slash Meta but perhaps that's going to come next. There are some potential negatives to a ban or for sale, which could be that there could be good information. Maybe there is. I know there is some on TikTok, which is where people are getting educated on healthcare topics. There's also TikTok's been useful for doing public health research and that would be harder to do, and it's just going to drive traffic elsewhere as well. So maybe you're just displacing the problem and the forced sale itself might not actually cause that much change on TikTok.
Well, that's it for another episode of Health Biz Podcast, a shorter one and a little bit different this week, since I'm not actually interviewing an innovative healthcare leader, just talking myself. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group. I hope you have a great week. You've been listening to the Health Biz Podcast with me, david Williams, president of Health Business Group. I conduct in-depth interviews with leaders in healthcare, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services in healthcare, check out our website, healthbusinessgroupcom.