- In 2023, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on healthcare. As much as half of that massive expenditure, $2.4 trillion, paid for activities unrelated to patient care called BARRCOME – bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, and enforcement.
- Medicare physician payments declined substantially from 2001 to 2024 — a whopping 29%.
- Currently, physicians are the only Medicare providers who do not receive annual, inflation-based payment updates.
- Head of the International Longshoremen’s Association explains what the strike is all about, along with a video showing how dockworkers can be replaced by automation. (it’s a long way from On the Water Front.
- Cato study: Marijuana doesn’t make you crazy.
- An Elon Musk device is allowing the blind to see.
Author: John C. Goodman
Medicare’s Bribe to Coax Part D Insurers Not to Raise Their Premiums on the Eve of the Election Will Be Costly For Taxpayers
Yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of a newly announced Biden-Harris program intended to paper over the flaws of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA). Based on CBO estimates, this election-year stunt to artificially lower the cost of seniors’ Part D premiums will cost taxpayers at least $7 billion in 2025, including $2 billion in additional interest on our already ballooning debt. If implemented as planned, this program could cost taxpayers more than $21 billion over the three-year demonstration.
Source: House Budget Committee
Thursday Links
- A Fauci aide who taught a coworker how to destroy government records to avoid complying with FOIA requests is taking the Fifth before a congressional committee.
- The real issue in the port workers strike is not wages, it’s automation.
- Why McDonald’s burgers taste better (different?) outside the US.
- The nanny state: number of US counties in which government transfers are more than 25% of personal income.
- Humana tumbles as insurer faces $3 billion hit to revenue over lower Medicare star ratings (Statnews)
- Medicaid is no longer for the poor: Enrollment as a percentage of the U.S. population has more than tripled, rising from around 8% in the late 1980s to nearly 27% by 2022, while the poverty rate remained relatively stable.
Another Government Report on the British National Health Service
The NHS has not hit key targets — like four-hour emergency room waits and 62-day waits between initial referral and first cancer treatment — since 2015. As of July, over 7.6 million people were waiting for NHS services in England, including 290,000 who had been waiting more than a year.