- Were the Dark Ages really all that dark?
- Most expensive state for health insurance (cost/median monthly household income): West Virginia. Least expensive state: Maryland.
- The bad news on single payer heath insurance.
- Why the Medicare Trustees failed to predict the cost-increasing consequences of the IRA bill.
Category: Medicare
Wednesday Links – 1 July 2026
- In March … a surgical assistant in Dallas earned $50,456 through arbitration for a prostate removal operation. The surgeon, who accepted the patient’s insurance, earned $1,843. (NYT)
- “The surgery done 700,000 times per year is no better than a placebo surgery.”
- Drug economics: the marginal cost of one more pill is almost zero; but the marginal cost of treatments based on the sequencing of your individual genome can be quite high.
- “The general pattern … research points to is that many people don’t use the time they save using AI to do less; they use the time to take on new tasks.” (The Atlantic)
- This hospital has opted out of Medicare, charges market prices in its ER and turns patients away if they can’t pay. (Statnews)
Skin Substitutes Are Another Example of Medicare Fraud
Medicare is plagued by waste, fraud, and abuse. I have written about questionable spending numerous times in the past. From unnecessary orthopedic leg braces, to unneeded urinary catheters, to Medicare hospice where patients routinely outlive the six months period they’re only supposed to survive, even to healthy patients unknowingly entered into hospice which is then billed to Medicare. Medicare beneficiaries sometimes discover they were fraudulently enrolled in hospice when they are turned down for therapeutic care.
Saturday Links – 20 June 2026
- Scott Alexander investigates reports of miracles.
- The shingles vaccine reduces dementia.
- An alarming drop in the percent of students who read for fun.
- Rural doctors are opting out of Medicare.
- The case for Mamdani’s cuts to NYC foster care.
- 10% of cash welfare goes to families headed by an illegal alien.
- Remembering the Tuskegee Experiment: Lessons