When telephones began to appear in American homes and businesses physicians were one of the early adopters. As health insurance began to spread patients became more reluctant to pay out of pocket for services not covered by their health plans. For their part, health insurers were reluctant to reimburse for services outside the usual and customary practices. At some point midcentury doctors stopped routinely talking to their patients on the phone because nobody wanted to pay them for the service. If you stop and think about it nothing could be more inconvenient – and antiquated – than having to make a doctor’s appointment to record routine health information. What if your car speedometer could only reveal your speed once you pulled back into your driveway, and then only one snapshot in time during your most recent trip. Over time payer reluctance to reimburse for telemedicine began to slowly change and covid accelerated the transition.
Category: Health Insurance
Biden’s New Tax Proposals
The Biden budget would … apply a 3.8% tax to pass-through income of more than $200,000. (Didn’t Mr. Biden promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000?)
Mr. Biden also wants to increase the surtax on earned and unearned income [from 3,8%] to 5% for couples earning more than $450,000 ($400,000 singles). On top of that, he calls for raising the top rate on ordinary income to 39.6% from 37%. This would raise the top effective marginal rate to 44.6%, and it would kick in at $450,000 instead of the current $693,751.
It gets worse. Mr. Biden also wants to apply the top 44.6% rate to capital gains for anyone earning more than $1 million—effectively doubling the current 23.8% tax on capital gains.
Pile on state income taxes—which reach as high as 14.8% in New York City and 13.3% in California—and many Americans would pay nearly 60% of their income to the tax man.
Thursday Links
- The Covid lockdowns appear to have caused a spike in alcohol related deaths.
- Why don’t we see dynamic pricing in health care?
- Why is Medicaid paying for Housing?
- 11 percent of U.S. 12 graders report using delta-8 (a psychoactive substance derived from hemp that is chemically very similar to delta-9-THC, the molecule in marijuana responsible for causing the high associated with taking cannabis).
- Social Security and Medicare spending are set to nearly double by 2033.
- Harvard’s Dr. Martin Kulldorff got the big things right on COVID, more than perhaps any other academic expert in America. He was censored on Twitter, fired by Harvard and fired by the CDC.
Monday Links
- Doctors are charging for email exchanges: $39 per consult.
- What Republicans should have shown as a response to the SOTU speech. HT: Tyler
- “Our legal system is really built for married couples.”
- Palm oil is in bread, instant noodles, Girl Scout cookies, lipstick, Nutella and ice cream, and almost everything else. So, what’s wrong with that? (NYT)