- CBO: Medicaid spending on illegal aliens has cost Taxpayers over $16.2 Billion in the last three years.
- o1 is the first AI to outperform PhD-level scholars on the toughest Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark and to excel in solving International Mathematics Olympiad problems.
- AEI: When the social Security Trust Fund becomes exhausted in 2033, most people assume the Treasury will reduce everyone’s monthly benefit check by 21%. In fact, the administration can means test the reduction – protecting the lowest income recipients at the expense of the highest – without any act of Congress.
- In OMB’s new cost benefit analysis, higher income people get lower weights than lower income people. Viscusi on why that matters and what can go wrong.
Category: Health Insurance
Study: Nearly Half of Cities are Dominated by only One or Two Large Hospital Systems
The U.S health care system consumes nearly one-in-five dollars of income. The latest figures are Americans pay nearly $4.5 trillion annually for medical care. Of that, about one-third is spent on hospital care. That is about double the proportion of GDP spent on physician care and three times the amount spent on drugs.
Saturday Links
- Dr. Marty Makary: The best way to lower drug costs in the United States are to stop taking drugs we don’t need.
- The Longshoreman’s union negotiator makes nearly $900,000 dollars a year and owned a 76-foot yacht, and the modal longshoreman makes north of $150,000 a year. HT: Maxwell Tabarrok.
- After ten years, Bob Graboyes thoughts on health care system are highly relevant today.
- Who has it easier in the USA today? While 68% of Democrats believe men have the advantage, only 32% of Republicans agree.
- What quality ratings look like in the Medicare Advantage program. There are no quality measurements for traditional Medicare.
- What happens when private equity takes over the emergency room. (a negative opinion)
- Why telemedicine needs to cross state lines.
- Stem cell research was used to cure Type One diabetes.
Friday Links
- In 2023, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on healthcare. As much as half of that massive expenditure, $2.4 trillion, paid for activities unrelated to patient care called BARRCOME – bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, and enforcement.
- Medicare physician payments declined substantially from 2001 to 2024 — a whopping 29%.
- Currently, physicians are the only Medicare providers who do not receive annual, inflation-based payment updates.
- Head of the International Longshoremen’s Association explains what the strike is all about, along with a video showing how dockworkers can be replaced by automation. (it’s a long way from On the Water Front.
- Cato study: Marijuana doesn’t make you crazy.
- An Elon Musk device is allowing the blind to see.