- Health care spending drops back to 17.3% of GDP.
- A less rosy view of the future of heath care spending.
- Paragon Health Institute: Medicaid expansion leads to a surge in spending, but reduces healthcare access for traditional Medicaid enrollees such as low-income children and people with disabilities and it doesn’t improve health.
- Biden: IRA drug rebates are saving seniors “as much as $618 per average dose on 47 prescription drugs.” Reality: Prescription drug prices increased by 2% under Trump, by 5.5% under Biden, and by nearly 6% in November. (WSJ)
Category: Policy & Legislation
AEI Corrects the Record
- New research by Gerald Auten of the US Treasury Department and David Splinter of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation finds that the after-tax income share of the top 1% has barely changed since 1962. More.
- Is it true that 1 in 8 American households are so poor that someone must skip a meal each month to get by? No, it is not—the real number is more like 1 in 50. More.
- Biden: The expanded child tax credit “cut child poverty in half in 2021.” Proper modeling: expanded CTC alone would have reduced the child poverty rate to 8.3 percent in 2021. More.
- The left-leaning Center for Budget Policies says we need housing subsidies because of market failure in the housing market. In fact, public housing subsidies are anti-marriage: Per HUD data, only 3% of subsidized housing serves “two adults with children.” More.
The Atlantic: Destigmatizing Hard Drug Use is a Huge Mistake
In high-income cities recently there were billboards filled with young, attractive, smiling people. The caption read “Drink with friends,” explaining if you drink & drive, ask a friend to go with you to help steer, watch for oncoming traffic and tell you when you’re swerving out of your lane. If that sounds utterly ridiculous that’s because it is. Except, drinking wasn’t the topic of the billboards, fentanyl use was.
Wednesday Links
- Lilly’s weight loss drug: if you stop taking it you will regain half the weight you have lost.
- Trump’s environmental record was surprisingly good.
- A typical couple reaching age 65 and retiring in 2020 has paid $680,000 in lifetime taxes. They can expect lifetime benefits of about $1.24 million. Most retiree couples are “Social Security millionaires,” regardless of other income and assets.
- One in four animals raised for food are never eaten.
- There are over 73,000 contract pharmacies that qualify for 340B discounts. Is anybody paying list price for these drugs?