- UK to speed up drug approval process. Needed: US acceptance of UK approvals in this country.
- GPT-4 passes the medical exam and then some.
- Why aren’t there any cost/benefit studies on bicycle lanes?
- Federal spending is up 40% since 2019. What are the drivers? They are not Social Security, Medicare or Defense.
- What have we learned after 13 years of Obamacare? If you make health insurance almost free, a lot of people will sign up. If you charge anywhere near the real cost, the market will spin into a death spiral.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
How the IRA Bill Subsidizes the Rich
The benchmark premium for an exchange plan in Prescott, Arizona, for a family of five with a 60-year-old household head is $50,923 in 2023.
- If that family made $150,000, they would qualify for a subsidy of $38,173.
- If that family made $350,000, they would qualify for a subsidy of $21,173.
- If that family made $500,000, they would qualify for a subsidy of $8,423.
- This family does not lose subsidy eligibility until they make more than $ 599,000.
The projected cost per newly insured is nearly $14,000 a year over the next decade—a high amount that shows that most of the new spending is simply replacing private spending with government spending.
Thursday Links
- Bill Gates: AI will revolutionize health care in the third world.
- Why do physicians “care” about their patients, any more than scientists care about a lab rat? Should they?
- HHS: surprise billing arbitrators are being swamped with claims. That’s because the law was poorly implemented.
- California’s highest concentrations of electric cars — between 10.9% and 14.2% of all vehicles — are in ZIP codes where residents are at least 75% white and Asian.
U.S. Health Care System Causes Patient Burnout (and Doctors Too)
Time Magazine discovered that seeing the doctor can be a real pain in the caboose. You aren’t feeling well so you call your doctor’s office. They tell you the next available appointment slot is several weeks away. You wait three weeks and finally present at the doctors’ office, where you wait in a “waiting room” while filling out a mountain of paperwork your doctor should already have. You are led to an exam room where you wait some more. You finally see your physician, whose face is buried in a computer screen. Ten minutes later you’re summarily dismissed and told to get lab work that has been ordered for you. A month later you get the bills (plural). Your appointment lasted only 10 minutes, but your budget will feel the sting for weeks to come. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.