- A (somewhat weak) defense of eating animals.
- The US has been falling behind other countries in life expectancy. (77 vs 82 years for all high-income countries)
- Possible reasons: we have more deaths by car crashes, gun homicides, suicides and overdoses.
- George Halvorson: Medicare Advantage is saving money for the Medicare program – despite contrary claims.
- Americans are the biggest consumers of high fructose corn syrup in the world. The reason: sugar quotas make the price of sugar in the US really high.
Category: Thursday Links
Thursday Links
- US plans to rejoin UNESCO. Trump pulled us out because the organization is flagrantly anti-capitalist and anti-US. Biden is not only rejoining; he has agreed to $619 million in “arrears” payments.
- More than 90% of cancer centers are impacted by drug shortages.
- Cato paper on new technologies: Should we try to avoid harmful effects by regulation or by tort law?
- Is woke culture the reason Hollywood can’t make good movies any more – unless it recycles old plots and themes?
- Two different views of AI:
The New York Times: “Generative A.I. Can Add $4.4 Trillion in Value to Global Economy, Study Says,”
Bloomberg: “Biggest Losers of AI Boom Are Knowledge Workers, McKinsey Says.”
Thursday Links
- AEI: Return the savings from site neutral payments to the hospitals. It’s called taking from the rich and then giving back to the rich.
- Where are we on the status of (legally) importing drugs from Canada? We’re getting close.
- Update on hospital price transparency: “The widescale noncompliance of 75.5% of hospitals is due to most hospitals’ files being incomplete, illegible, or not having prices clearly associated with both payer and plan.”
- A new model for cell and gene therapies: Medicaid pays only if they work.
- AI Quote of the week:
So far I have explained why four of the five most often proposed risks of AI are not actually real – AI will not come to life and kill us, AI will not ruin our society, AI will not cause mass unemployment, and AI will not cause an ruinous increase in inequality. But now let’s address the fifth, the one I actually agree with: AI will make it easier for bad people to do bad things.
Thursday Links
- 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.