21.3 million Americans with high (and likely unaffordable) deductibles and narrow access to doctors and drugs. The vast majority of whom are having their premiums paid, in whole or in part, by taxpayers. It’s worth pointing out that many of the new enrollees are likely people who did not enroll when the premium was 2-4% of their income but do when coverage is given to them for free. The data below does not yet have 2024 (breakdown by income has not been released yet), but I’d bet the trend holds.
Category: News and Events
Thursday Links
- Can medical expenses be crowdfunded?
- Study of treatment facilities for adolescents with opioid use disorder: nearly 40 percent had no beds immediately available or offered a waitlist, with a mean wait time of 28.4 days. Only 57 percent accepted Medicaid. We are becoming more like Canada every day.
- David Frieman on historical “facts” you have probably heard about (and even seen depicted in movies) that are actually myths. Fun reading.
- The Geothermal energy solution: “There’s 41 times more heat energy in the earth’s crust than that of all known petroleum and nuclear fuel reserves. What’s more, the energy of that sun beneath our feet is carbon-free and potentially available all day, every day.”
- More on abolishing the FDA.
Wednesday Links
- Hospital patients do better if they brush their teeth.
- Florida’s plan to import drugs from Canada is limited to state employees. It does not apply to the uninsured or to those with private coverage.
- Google cofounder Larry Page once accused Tesla CEO Elon Musk of being a “specieist,” who preferred humans over future digital life forms.
- More on whether AI will take over and kill all the humans.
- More evidence that bureaucracy is no substitute for real markets: “There was no evidence of a differential change in thirty-day mortality among all Medicare beneficiaries with targeted conditions at high-proportion Black hospitals versus other hospitals seven years after the implementation of the [Value Based Purchasing] Program.”
Tuesday Links
- Why do Academic medical centers fail to succeed in value-based care? My theory: they function more like universities than like real businesses.
- If a vaccine is in limited supply and has to be rationed, does it make sense to give people partial doses?
- Covid spending correlates with inflation rates across 37 countries.
- Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. The second type of person will always gain control of the organization. HT: Arnold Kling