- Cancer phobia: In 2017, 21.3 million American women had cancer screening tests even though they were outside the age ranges for recommended screening. 10.1 million men outside the recommended age ranges had a PSA test.
- People with Obamacare health insurance are being switched to other plans without their knowledge or consent by rogue agents.
- Why are expensive cancer treatments excluded from Medicare’s price negotiations?
- Henry Miller: “The vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, prevented 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization.”
Tuesday Links
- Food stamp households spend a disproportionate share of their food budget on unhealthy items, such as sugary beverages and prepared desserts. And it’s worse than other low-income households who don’t have food stamps.
- Social Security tells Kotlikoff the number of Social Security clawback letters per year is probably closer to 3 million. (It started at 1M in a congressional hearing; then jumped to 2M in answer to a FOIA request by KFF; and now it’s at 3M. (No telling what the real answer is.)
- Less than half of the benefit of Obamacare subsides goes to the newly insured. One-third of it is wasted.
- In 2023, 79 percent of (Obamacare) enrollees received subsidies (up from 44 percent in 2015), at an average cost of $20,739 per enrollee gaining coverage.
Monday Links
- “We find that one-quarter of food-insecure households fall within the top three quintiles of the income distribution and that food-insecure households spend about as much as food-secure households do on food per week.”
- Biden lowers the hammer on short-term insurance: plans can only last 3 months with a 1 month renewal.
- This year alone, the federal government will spend more than $1.1 trillion to fund more than 130 anti-poverty programs. State and local governments will kick in an additional $700 billion, pushing total anti-poverty spending to more than $1.8 trillion. If all that money were given to the poor it would equal $47,493 per person.
- Bob Moffett authors another review of Modernizing Medicare.
- There have been 70 legal changes to Obamacare so far.
Medicare to Cover Some Costly Weight-Loss Drugs (that’s both good and bad)
The first Medicare health plans announced they will cover the weight-loss drug, Wegovy for certain patients with heart disease. By law, Medicare is not allowed to cover drugs solely for weight loss. Elevance (operates many Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans), Kaiser Permanente and CVS Health are the first Medicare plans to cover weight loss drugs for health reasons, according to the Wall Street Journal.