- Open source programming is making AI impossible to regulate.
- After raising $90 million, Black Lives Matter is on the verge of bankruptcy. Question: Do any of the corporations that contributed really care?
- Zeke Emanuel megatrend prediction number 1: We will see a merging of insurers and providers.
- Zeke Emanuel megatrend prediction number 2: We will see an uprooting of the payment system in Medicare Advantage – the one place where prediction number 1 is actually occurring.
- Between 1997 and 2011, 85% of the increase in real per capita Medicare spending was on newly created procedure codes marking additional medical services. There is no fiscal restraint on these spending increases.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Just Say “No!” to Hospital Bailouts
More health care dollars are spent in hospitals than any other health care sector. Nearly one-third (31%) of the $4.255 trillion in health care expenditures are spent on hospital care. Physician care is 14.9%, while drugs are 8.9%. Thirty years ago, presidential candidate Ross Perot described a “giant sucking sound” due to jobs being sucked abroad by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Nowadays the giant sucking sound is the sound of workers’ and taxpayers’ income being sucked into hospitals due to price gouging and high hospital prices.
Tuesday Links – 30 May 2023
- Why is the left still telling lies about Michael Brown? (Yglesias)
- I agree with Greg Mankiw: Its lonely out there. “Socially liberal and fiscally conservative” is the least common combination in American politics. The typical swing voter is instead “socially conservative and fiscally liberal.” (NYT)
- CBO: federal spending will exceed federal revenues for as far as the eye can see.
- Is the ivory-billed woodpecker really extinct? The debate rages.
Monday Links
- Roughly half of states are waiving current food stamp work requirements. Of 800 counties nationwide where work is waived, only 20 have unemployment rates above the 10% threshold prescribed by the waiver process.
- Michael Tanner: work requirements can be cumbersome and costly to enforce; there is also limited evidence that they increase employment or save much money.
- Federal housing subsides are twice as large as cash welfare; and they come with no time limits and no work requirements.
- Mile long trains can keep EMTs away from patients who need help.