- University of North Carolina rejects woke education for medical students.
- Kotlikoff: the debt deal overlooks the real federal debt.
- Reuters exposes wastes of Climate Change funds.
- The health consequences of being a vegan.
- The only effect of greater access to student loans: more money for universities.
- Effect of a public option in Minnesota: losses for providers, but little effect on the number of people with health insurance.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Welfare and Workfare Reform Under President Clinton
New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg predicted American cities would resemble the streets of Calcutta, with “children begging for food and 8- and 9-year-old prostitutes.” California Rep. Nancy Pelosi said that the bill would devastate children and was “a dishonor to the God that made them.” California Rep. Maxine Waters labeled the bill “shameful.”
John Lewis of Georgia alluded to Nazi Germany by asserting of his colleagues: “They are coming for the children . . . coming for the poor, coming for the sick, the elderly and disabled.”
Eventually President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which proved these objections wrong.
Thursday Links
- Open source programming is making AI impossible to regulate.
- After raising $90 million, Black Lives Matter is on the verge of bankruptcy. Question: Do any of the corporations that contributed really care?
- Zeke Emanuel megatrend prediction number 1: We will see a merging of insurers and providers.
- Zeke Emanuel megatrend prediction number 2: We will see an uprooting of the payment system in Medicare Advantage – the one place where prediction number 1 is actually occurring.
- Between 1997 and 2011, 85% of the increase in real per capita Medicare spending was on newly created procedure codes marking additional medical services. There is no fiscal restraint on these spending increases.
Smartphones are Creating a Public Health Emergency
I read a lot. If I’m away from my computer I read on my iPhone. My wife sometimes complains when I’m paying too much attention to my phone and not enough to what she’s saying. Come to find out that is very common. A couples therapist with 25-years of experience reports that the biggest new cause of friction in relationships is the smart phone.