- IRA Medicare Part D reforms explained. There is a huge reduction in the government’s contribution to the program that Republicans never talked about.
- Alex and Tyler discuss efficient gift giving.
- A different view of gift giving.
- 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease.
- Milei is taking his “chain saw” to Argentinian government programs. On the chopping block: the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity.
Category: Monday Links
Monday Links
- During the pandemic, government payments for social benefits rose by $1.5 trillion, or 47%, between 2019 and 2021. At the same time, the official poverty rate rose to 11.6% from 10.5%.
- Using a consistent measure of poverty, AEI researchers find that only 1.6% of the population lives in poverty, well below the official poverty rate of 10.5%.
- The case for a value added tax.
- Likely scenarios if the government seizes drug company patents: They’re all bad.
- New technology can identify genetic defects before Invitro Fertilization begins.
- “Canadian woman is diagnosed with cancer, told she has 2 years to live at most, that she is not a candidate for surgery but would she like medical help committing suicide? She declines, comes to the United States, spends a lot of money, and is treated within weeks.”
Monday Links
- James Pethokoukis: the latest numbers confirm that inequality has been exaggerated.
- Study: illegal immigration causes voters to prefer smaller government; and less money for education (with social benefits ) and more law-and-order spending (with private benefits).
- House Republican leader Mike Johnson’s views on how to reform health care.
- Medicare ACOs did not improve mental health outcomes.
- Universal health care in Canada: the health service refuses treatment for cancer and refuses to reimburse the patient for the cost of treatment in the U.S.
- Criticisms of pot legalization do not hold up.
Monday Links
- AI is better than Dear Abby. HT: Tyler
- Commonwealth Fund: having insurance doesn’t mean health care is affordable. Missing: the observation that Obamacare has made the problem worse.
- The meaning of the Cigna settlement with the government: Medicare Advantage plans should be held accountable for submitting accurate risk adjustment data.
- Which is better: for-profit or nonprofit? All the evidence, much of which Effective Altruists helped to compile, shows that nonprofits are much more likely to be fraudulent, or to simply fail to achieve their goals.
- Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky makes two claims: one possibly true (there is no free will) and one very wrong (it is unfair to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior). The first claim is irrelevant because we experience the world as though we have free will, and we have no alternative to that. And, the reason to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior is the utilitarian desire to get more of the former and less of the latter.
- [This is also an example of the fallacy of the stolen concept. If you claim there is no good or bad behavior because there is no free will, you can’t turn around and use ethics to condemn the rewarding and the punishing.]