- CBO on the Democrat’s IRA bill: “Part D spending per beneficiary in 2035 is now projected to be more than $4,000, up from less than $3,000 in the January 2025 baseline.”
- Another CBO report: What cuts in Medicaid?
- Pressure has real effects on an athlete’s body.
- The case for statins.
- What an increasing number of patients want from their therapists: extra time on their tests of permission to keep a pet. (WSJ)
Category: Saturday Links
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.”
Saturday Links
- Capretta on Trump’s new health care plan.
- Are health care cost really a major worry for American workers?
- If Chinese migrant workers were their own country, it would be one of the ten largest in the world.
- New Obamacare exchange: Earning just one dollar more could mean a $10,000 increase in insurance premiums. (NYT)
- “Contrary to a common perception, the United States has always been an active industrial policy nation throughout the period, regardless of which party is in power.”
- Good and bad news on cancer:
The good news: overall, five-year survival rates for people with cancer have increased from 50 percent to 70 percent since the mid-70s
The bad news: For adults under 50, incidence rates are climbing nearly 3 percent per year (up from the 1 to 2 percent annual increase reported in the previous decade). Of greater concern is the fact that CRC is now the top cancer killer in that age group.
Saturday Links – 24 January 2026
- A Trump trade deal that is good for the US and the UK.
- There is supposed to be a $2,000 cap on Medicare enrollee drug spending. So how do some people reach the cap after spending only $1,200?
- How to reform the food stamp program.
- Kotlikoff on entitlement programs:
Earn or save $1 too much and, depending on the state, lose thousands of dollars in your own or your family members’ Medicaid benefits. Hold $1 too much in assets and forfeit thousands in Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Earn an extra dollar in a Medicaid non-expansion state and receive thousands of dollars in otherwise unavailable [Obamacare] subsidies.
In 2023, a record 62 million Americans smoked pot; 17 million now use it daily or near daily. One in 12 young adults used a hallucinogen; one in 18 misused prescription stimulants such as Adderall. Another 2.6 million Americans over 12 took meth. Overdoses still claim the lives of 70,000 Americans annually; the majority died using synthetic opioids like fentanyl. HT: Arnold Kling