- Real 403B reform would “require that savings are passed directly to patients at the pharmacy counter—not buried in hospital spreadsheets.”
- 31% of men ages 25-40 who are not working full-time collected some form of cash or cash-equivalent benefit in the form of food stamps, Social Security for disability, Supplemental Security Income, or unemployment insurance in the prior year.
- China v. the U.S.: China’s share of total world gross domestic product has grown from 3.5 percent in 2000 to just under 17 percent today, while the US has gone from 30 percent to 26 percent. During this same period, China has gone from 6 percent to over 30 percent of total world manufacturing output, while the US has fallen from 25 percent to 17 percent.
- Covid update: The parents most reluctant to send their kids back to school in blue cities in the spring of 2021 were black and Hispanic, research has consistently found, not white. And the most organized opposition to school reopening came from teachers’ unions,
- The case for turning Social Security into a flat benefit.
- House Medicaid reforms graph by graph.
- The House reconciliation package will add at least $3.3 trillion to the debt through 2034.
Category: Saturday Links
Saturday Links – 10 May 2025
Lowering the FMAP for the expansion population, applying per-capita caps to the entire Medicaid population, eliminating states’ ability to charge provider taxes, applying per-capita caps to the expansion population only, and repealing the Biden administration’s eligibility and enrollment rules.
would cut the federal deficit by as much as $710 billion, result in up to 8.6 million people losing Medicaid coverage and up to 3.9 million becoming uninsured.
- Essay: In practice, Medicaid work requirements are likely to be very loose, and to do little either to save taxpayers money or to oblige people to assume full-time employment.”
- Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General: the root causes of chronic disease is what we eat.
- Claim: “US dietary guidelines have made us ill.”
- Obamacare exchanges: younger people are overpaying so that older people can be undercharged.
- Just eliminating fraud would save the federal government $5T over ten years.
Saturday Links
- Why elimination diets don’t always work.
- Bizarre California regulation: hospitals are ordered to spend less money.
- Noah Smith on what all the news outlets are getting wrong: Imports do not subtract from GDP.
- What tax rate do billionaires face?
- The case for the HOPE Act.
- What’s wrong with Medicare’s “alternative payment models.”
Saturday Links
- AAF: tariffs are especially bad for small business.
- Site neural payments would save taxpayers an estimated $150 billion over 10 years.
- Historically, Washington covered about 60% of Medicaid costs. Today, Washington pays nearly 75%.
- Merely requiring states to more frequently check whether current beneficiaries still qualify would save federal taxpayers $115 billion over a decade.
- The prophet’s paradox: The better policymakers manage a potential crisis, the more likely it is that the public will perceive their actions as overreactions.
- Breakthrough: scientists send a quantum message.
- AEI: Fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid and Medicare.