- Geriatric loneliness: are robots the answer?
- “The hundreds of fine hairs that cover an elephant’s trunk are some of the most sophisticated and sensitive whiskers in the animal kingdom.”
- Miracle drug for prostate cancer has a problem: It might have prevented an American athlete from making the Olympic team. (NYT)
- All of the job gains last year were in health care. The rest of the economy lost jobs.
- Someone with average lifetime earnings of $50,000 can expect to receive about four dollars in Medicare benefits for every dollar of Medicare payroll taxes paid.
Category: Medicare
Saturday Links – 14 February 2026
- Valentine fact of the day: The US marriage rate has fallen by half since 1900.
- National income per capita was below $19,000 in 1955. In 2025 it approached $69,500. (John Cochran’s entire piece on “Misplaced Nostalgia” is worth reading.
- A drug selling for $3,2 million a dose is not safe, not effective and still on the market.
- A global budget (not tied to FFS) saves a rural hospital financially. But there is no improvement in the quality of care.
- Should drug ads be required to include more useless information?
- The average wait to see a physician is now about 31 days.
- Eugene Steuerle: “Congress has left Social Security, Medicare, and many healthcare programs on autopilot and expanding faster than the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) or income…. they alone, along with interest, now account for more than 100 percent of projected future inflation-adjusted spending growth and over 125 percent of revenue growth.” (Entire piece recommended)
- Why “a calorie is not a calorie.”
Wednesday Links – 11 February 2026
- Food stamp fraud.
- “In what some experts deem one of the largest examples of Medicare waste in history, Medicare spending on wound care products known as “skin substitutes” skyrocketed from $256 million in 2019 to over $10 billion in 2024.”
- The city enjoying a Super Bowl parade:
- More than 35% of office and retail space downtown sits vacant, with even some prime waterfront properties sitting empty.
- The region lost 12,900 jobs last year, the first annual decline since the recession of 2009.
- It also has the highest inflation rate of any major metro region in the country with consumer prices soaring 29% from 2021 through 2025.
The quarterback for the Seahawks, Sam Darnold, faces a California tax bill exceeding $200,000, which more than cancels out the $188,000 payment he (and every other member of the Seahawks) will receive from the NFL for being the winner.
Monday Links – 9 February 2026
- What happens when you quit sugar? (Video)
- Hims & Hers is selling a Wegovy knockoff pill for $49. Novo Nordisk is suing.
- Update on Medicare price negotiations.
- War on poverty update: while poverty fell significantly from 1939 to 1963, the rate of decline was no greater following 1964. Also, almost all of the poverty decline among children and working-age adults was achieved through higher market incomes instead of government support.
- Are CMS star ratings for nursing homes useless?
- Poor people now get about three-fourths of their “income” from government handouts. Back in 1979, the poor actually earned about two-thirds of their income from jobs.