Kaiser: Health insurers’ margins were more than double in Medicare Advantage than in other markets in 2021. Gross margins in the Medicare Advantage market averaged $1,730 per enrollee in 2021, compared with $768 in the Medicaid managed care market, $745 in the individual market and $689 in the fully insured group market.
Author: John C. Goodman
Thursday Links
- Arnold Kling gives an (admittedly Jewish) view of why Christianity is unravelling.
- Claim: social media is a major cause of depression – especially in teen girls.
- Turns out its worse if the girls are politically liberal.
- There are 34 million Health Savings Accounts, holding almost $100 billion.
- Biden accuses MAGA Republicans of wanting to cut health care spending. This is after the Democrats’ IRA bill cut $307 billion out of Medicare (CBO report, p, 72) and the administration plans future large cuts in Medicare Advantage.
Wednesday Links
- Most new drugs do not cover the cost of their development. So, the pharmaceutical industry needs a few blockbusters (with annual revenues of $1 billion or more) in order to survive. HT: Tyler
- Railroad deregulation occurred under Carter, not under Trump and accidents and derailments plunged thereafter.
- Humans share 98.8 percent of their DNA with bonobos and chimpanzees.
- Is Biden about to surrender authority over US pandemic policy to the WHO?
- Prof. Marty Makary: Ten myths about Covid that were propagated by the “experts.”
- How different federal agencies view the origin of Covid.
- Yglesias on the lab leak theory.
Tuesday Links
- Lancet study: Covid natural immunity is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines.
- Nearly all contemporary countries were colonized at some point in their history by a foreign power; yet most citizens have a favorable attitudes toward their country’s former colonizer. HT: Tyler
- Losing fitness: Scientists have found that it is around the three-week mark [of no exercise] that people experience the biggest changes in their ability to get through a workout. (NYT)
- North Carolina’s medical system would have had an additional 55 hospitals, including 24 in vulnerable rural areas, were it not for the state’s certificate-of-need regulations. (WSJ)
- Cocaine Bear scene: what are the effects of swallowing a tablespoon of cocaine?