Category: Medicare

The Most Rapid Change in Family Structure in Human History

Posted on by John C. Goodman

This is David Brooks:

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

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The Case for Pessimism

Posted on by John C. Goodman

Bret Stephens:

In 2012, there were roughly 41,000 overdose deaths in the United States. Last year, the number topped 100,000. In 2012, there were 4.7 murders for every 100,000 people. Last year, the rate hit an estimated 6.9, a 47 percent increase. A decade ago, you rarely heard of carjackings. Now, they are through the roof. Shoplifting? Ditto. The nation’s mental health was in steep decline before the pandemic, with a 60 percent increase of major depressive episodes among adolescents between 2007 and 2019. Everything we know about the effects of lockdowns and school closures suggests it’s gotten much worse.

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Medicare Drug Plan Spending Growth to Double

Posted on by Devon Herrick

A report published in Health Affairs estimates that Medicare Part D spending will rapidly increase in the coming years. The reasons are both good news and bad news. Basically, new drugs in the pipeline and an increasing array of specialty drugs will drive spending growth. From 2009 to 2018 spending on Medicare Part D drugs increased about…

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Fight Childhood Obesity by Making School Lunches Less Appetizing

Posted on by Devon Herrick

About 30 million school kids qualify for free or low-cost school lunches through the National School Lunch Program. A dozen years ago a federal law tightened school lunch nutritional requirements with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The federal law hoped to increase school kids intake of vegetables, fruits, fiber, grains and unsweetened beverages. The federal initiative was in response to findings that children who got free lunches were gaining more weight than higher income children not in the program. Prior to the tightened federal standards, low-income children enrolled in the school lunch program were more likely to have a body mass index closer to the obesity threshold than their higher-income peers. Rather than alleviate hunger, there was concern that the school lunch program was contributing to childhood obesity. According to the CDC, 21% of kids age 6 to 11 are obese, while 17% of adolescents age 12 to 19 are obese. Nearly 10% have severe obesity. 

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