- Elephants and bats live a long time in part because they don’t get cancer.
- Motherhood drives the earning gap between men and women.
- Is the statistical value of a year of life (which is supposed to drive medical and regulatory decisions) too high?
- Almost half of the adults receiving health insurance via the (Obamacare) exchanges either own or work for small businesses.
- Since Medicare’s inception in 1966, its spending has grown about 1.5 times faster than the economy.
- Why Matt Yglegias rejects the Billionaire Derangement Syndrome.
Category: Affordable Care Act
What’s Wrong with Obamacare?
Taxpayers paid more than $114 billion directly to insurers in 2024 … more than six times as much as in 2014.
Our study shows the correlation between premium growth and subsidy growth is nearly perfect.
In 2024, 90% of subsidy-eligible enrollees had access to plans with net premiums of $10 a month or less.
We found that the market size for unsubsidized Obamacare plans shrank by a quarter, from $23 billion in 2014 to $17 billion in 2024.
Obamacare is a poor value, a product few Americans would voluntarily purchase without subsidies.
Saturday Links
- Obamacare light: “this cautious approach will make it difficult to argue Republicans have a plan to lower costs for the majority of American consumers.”
- Against Republican Food Stamp restrictions. (I don’t agree. In most states you usually must certify your status weekly or bi-weekly to keep receiving Unemployment Compensation.)
- Senate Republican health plan: Eligible individuals age 18 to 49 with incomes below 700 percent of the federal poverty line would get $1,000 annually in 2026 and 2027, while those age 60 to 64 would get $1,500. Those amounts are far less than the $7,500 average deductible for bronze coverage in 2026 or the $10,600 required by the ACA’s catastrophic insurance plans.
- Unique study of the benefits of college admission: cost-benefit calculations show internal rates of return of 26 percent for the students, 16 percent for society (which must pay for the additional education), and 7 percent for the government budget.
Wednesday Links
- Next year, the number of counties with only one company providing Obamacare will jump from 72 to 146.
- Clinicians make over 100 million specialty referrals annually in the U.S., yet research shows that as many as half are never completed.
- The United States currently recommends immunizing all children against 17 diseases. In Denmark it’s only 10. (NYT)
- One in ten participants in Canada and Poland were persuaded to change their candidate preference after interacting with an AI chatbot tasked with converting them.
- A new trend in Christmas gifts: health tracking devices. (WSJ)
- “Some 50 million Americans struggle with drug and alcohol addiction… drug overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old.” (NYT)