- The top 1% now pay almost half of all federal income taxes – the highest in history.
- Why isn’t UV light everywhere?
- Bad news on alcohol: binge drinking affects microbe in your gut and makes you crave alcohol even more.
- More bad news on drinking and the microbiome. (NYT: gated)
- Trump tax cuts: the rich are now paying more than ever.
- Can recessions be good for our health?
Author: John C. Goodman
Friday Links
- Over half the new jobs in January’s report are in government or health care.
- Smoking is worse than you’ve been told. Long lasting effects after you quit.
- What happens when doctors become hospital employees? Medicare patients’ use of non-hospital sources for chemotherapy declined by 14% from 2015 to 2021, and chemotherapy performed in hospitals increased by 21%. More than half of Medicare chemotherapy patients now receive their treatments in hospitals, where the prices are higher.
- How health insurance eats into wages. Premiums for a family made up about 8% of employees’ compensation in 1988. If they stayed at that level for the next 32 years, a typical family would have earned an additional $8,774 in 2019. The cumulative value of lost earnings tops $125,000.
Thursday Links
- About one third of older adults reported being socially isolated in 2023, while nearly 40% reported a lack of companionship.
- Pfizer spent $14 million on its “Here’s to Science” commercial during the Super Bowl. Was it worth it?
- The Biden administration pressured Amazon to delist or downgrade books that disagreed with the White House.
- Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election.
- Kaiser to Oakland workers: Because of crime threat, stay inside for work and lunch.
Wednesday Links
- Why an advance directive is not as easy as you might think it is.
- Think AI will never replace you? Think again.
- The case for the Trump rule, as opposed to the Biden rule, on Association Health Plans.
- Since the Senate foreign aid bill (Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan) is not paid for, it will add $1,200 per household to our federal debt.