- Study: “we estimate that workers with week-long Covid-19 absences are 7 percentage points less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work for health reasons.”
- Why do academics want to ignore the importance of family structure?
- Mike Kim, owner of Grubb’s Pharmacy in Washington, DC, told STAT News in 2017 that he routinely ships medication for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia to members on Capitol Hill through a contract he has with the Office of the Attending Physician of the United States Congress.
- In 2023, US gross domestic product (GDP) hit $200,000 per household.
- Why so many kids from rich families get into elite colleges.
- A slew of speculations on why Medicare spending has slowed. (NYT)
Category: Medicare
Saturday Links
- To keep the doctor away, try 4,000 steps a day.
- Medicaid expansion states attracted more than twice as many able-bodied adults as predicted — leading to cost overruns topping $66 billion. (WSJ)
- A toe, foot or leg is cut off by a doctor about 150,000 times a year in America, making the United States a world leader of these amputations.
- Your prospects are better if your surgeon is female.
- Scientists recreated a Pink Floyd song by reading the brain signals of listeners.
- As many as two-thirds of US physicians experience burnout and this decreases the quality of care and increases the average health care costs.
Was Obamacare a Plot to Usher in Medicare-for-All?
At the time of the Affordable Care Act’s passage, many suspicious conspiracy theory proponents suggested the goal of Obamacare was to fail in order to usher in a single-payer program of Medicare-for-All. The theory goes something like this: with nowhere to turn except the government, Americans would finally throw up their hands and acquiesce to government intervention. Seniors purportedly all love their Medicare, so why not expand the program to cover everyone?
Why Has Medicare Spending Slowed?
Spending per Medicare beneficiary has nearly leveled off over more than a decade.
If Medicare spending had grown the way it had for much of its history, federal spending would have been $3.9 trillion higher since 2011, and deficits would have been more than a quarter larger, according to an Upshot analysis. The difference is more than could be saved by raising the eligibility age for Social Security or converting Medicaid into a block grant, controversial proposals raised by legislators concerned about the federal debt.