- Effects of the IRA bill: From 2023 to 2024, the average Part D premium rose by 21 percent — the highest increase ever. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the three largest Part D sponsors — Cigna, Humana, and Aetna — increased premiums for certain common plans anywhere from 33 percent to 57 percent.”
- The number of people getting married (per capita) has fallen to an all time low.
- IRA and CHIPS industrial policy: only 3% of projects are operational; and less than half are on track.
- Chris Pope: Elderly entitlement programs take from the poor and give to the rich.
- How testosterone and culture affect behavior of boys v. girls.
- Study: the federal government could save taxpayers up to $2.15 billion annually if insurers operating in the Medicare prescription drug plans purchased seven generic oncology drugs at the prices obtained by Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs.
Category: Policy & Legislation
Thursday Links
- The case against the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- Why is the “Lab Leak” hypothesis so controversial?
- CBO: restoring solvency to the Social Security and Disability trust funds would require an immediate 31-percent payroll tax increase or a 24-percent across-the-board benefit cut.
- Update on Obamacare: “The percentage of individual market consumers enrolled in plans with broad provider networks declined from 36 percent to 11 percent between 2014 and 2023. An increasing share of individual market enrollees are in Medicaid-managed-care-like plans…”
- Another update: “ACA plan networks in 2021 included on average only 40% of doctors in a patient’s area and even fewer in such places as Cook County, Ill. (14%), Orange County, Calif. (25%), and Los Angeles (25%). More than a quarter of physicians who participated in traditional Medicare don’t participate in any ACA plan.” (WSJ)
Wednesday Links
- Noah Smith’s case for Biden’s industrial policy.
- On way a hospital makes money: don’t let the patients leave: (NYT)
- A social worker spent six days inside an Acadia hospital in Florida after she tried to get her bipolar medications adjusted.
- A woman who works at a children’s hospital was held for seven days after she showed up at an Acadia facility in Indiana looking for therapy.
- And after police officers raided an Acadia hospital in Georgia, 16 patients told investigators that they had been kept there “with no excuses or valid reason.”
- Medicare is barred by law from paying for weight loss drugs just for weight loss. But Medicaid can, and federal taxpayers pay as much as half the cost. (NYT)
- The Little Sisters of the Poor fought for seven years before winning against Obamacare mandates in court.
- Lesson from both political conventions: Neither party cares whether the poor or the near poor have health insurance.
Heritage Reviews Ten Years of Obamacare
High Premiums
High Deductibles
Narrow Networks
Less Choice
Source Ed Haislmaier, Ten Health Trends, Heritage Foundation