- Can access to credit affect the quality of health care hospitals deliver?
- Viewpoint: we are at the start of a 4th industrial revolution.
- Medicare Advantage telehealth primary care visits. They are more likely when the beneficiary is frail (39.4%), when the beneficiary is disabled (20.1%) and when low income (8.3%).
- Elevance study: Medicare Advantage saved Medicare as much as $144 billion over ten years. (I’ll have more to say about this study in the near future.)
Category: Saturday Links
Saturday Links
- In most developed countries, out-of-pocket-spending on health care as a percent of household income is higher than it is in the US.
- Dr. Marty Makary on four health myths.
- Study: Expanding access to weight loss drugs could prevent more than 40,000 deaths a year in the United States.
- Researchers refuse to publish their own study showing that puberty blockers did not improve the mental health of children.
- A secret shopper survey called the first 100 doctors on Anthem’s directory. Only seven out of the 100 actually accepted the insurance and would take new patients.
- How often Nobel Prize winning economists have been wrong about national politics.
- Kotlikoff: Ten Medicare mistakes to avoid.
Saturday Links
- Medicare Part D Market: Average premiums are up 57%; average plan choices are down 53%; some state premiums increases are north of 100% (CA, NY, NV).
- Kamala’s home health care benefit: The nation already spends more than $130 billion on home care and $190 billion on nursing home care. Having Medicare assume these costs, would increase Medicare spending by 14 percent – assuming no increase in demand.
- Why Trump’s trade ideas don’t add up.
- The seven battleground states have less than 17% of the nation’s population, but they are on track to collect 44% of the green new deal (IRA) money.
- CBO: the 10-year cost of Medicare coverage of anti-obesity medications is $35.5 billion. Health benefits are uncertain.
Saturday Links
- How Medicare is lowering the quality of health care.
- Another unfunded liability: public sector pensions.
- How Kamala Harris’s proposed housing subsidies would affect the housing market.
- Cost of the tax subsidy for employer provided heath insurance: $300 billion in 2023 and $5.6 trillion over the next decade. 88 percent of the benefit goes to households with above median incomes.
- CBO on the IRA bill: it is possible that the entirety of the law’s projected deficit reduction will never occur.
- The Green revolution isn’t happening: Despite a $1 trillion taxpayer “investment” in renewable energy, we still meet 80% of our energy needs from old-fashioned fossil fuels.
- The Code of Federal Regulations contains 1,089,462 restrictions (at the end of 2022), measured by the frequency of the keywords “shall,” “must,” “may not,” “required,” and “prohibited,” more than double the number at the end of 1970.