Your phone is spying on you. It’s sometimes a blabbermouth that reveals more secrets about you than you want to admit even to yourself. It tells advertisers when you Google health conditions you’d rather not share with others. It knows where you go, when you speed, and which locations you spend time at. It knows when you waste time at work texting friends or looking for a new romantic interest on dating websites. If your phone is stolen it will sometimes tell thieves how to steal money from your bank account or credit cards. I use mine to locate the aisle where an item I need is at Walmart and Kroger.
Category: News and Events
Saturday Links
- Despite President Biden’s commitment to being the most pro-union president in history and despite Secretary of Labor Julie Su’s calm that 2023 was a “banner year for labor actions and unions,” the share of US workers who actually belong to a union is shrinking – and has been shrinking for decades.
- How Covid lockdowns affected learning: a decrease in average scores for eighth graders, losing nearly half of the gains made in the previous 30 years.
- The government’s mandatory health care spending now exceeds its entire discretionary budget.
- Women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. This is also true internationally.
- FREOPP reviews Modernizing Medicare.
Rural Hospitals are Suffering, as are Their Patients
The medical news website, Kaiser Health News ran an article about a rural hospital in Oklahoma suing its patients over unpaid bills. This is now an old, familiar story in health care. Hospitals, including nonprofit organizations, sometimes sue patients for delinquent medical debts. Obamacare was supposed to do away with medical debt but many people still have cost-sharing they cannot afford.
Friday Links
- Senators propose to remove barriers to telemental health services for Medicare beneficiaries.
- Bidenomics: The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021.
- Thanks to a Trump initiative, if wait times for veterans do not meet an “access standard” (e.g., 20 days for primary care and mental health care and 28 days for specialty care), they may seek private sources of care. However, private wait times may be longer than VA wait times.
- A flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) likely won’t cover wearable devices like an Apple Watch or Fitbit, but blood pressure monitors, blood sugar test kits, thermometers, hearing aids and Oura rings—which monitor biometrics primarily focused on sleep—are typically eligible.
- Alex Tabarrok on how much regulation is needed in medical care.