In the comments section of an earlier post 1/3 of Medicare Spending is Wasted, I had stated to everyone, “Medicare does NOT PAY FOR ITSELF.” This is what I meant by that comment: “For more than a decade the the federal government has borrowed to pay for the rising cost of Medicare. Debt-financing of Medicare […]
Urban Legend— You write: That claim that one-third of Medicare spending is wasted sounds pretty questionable to me.” This is your opinion. If you had spent the last 20 years working as a medical researcher investigating unnecessary treatment, your opinion would be of great interest to all of us; but, I’m assuming you have not […]
2014 Long Term Budget Outlook (pdf 64pp) While we are still waiting on the 2014 Social Security Report we do have today the release of CBO’s annual Budget Outlook which among other parts does include a chapter on Social Security. I plan to extract and post some Tables from it but in the meantime people […]
The Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity has now released its factual documentation for its misleading ad featuring Julie Boonstra, a Michigan woman stricken with Leukemia who suggests Obamacare forced her to take on a new plan that is now “unaffordable.” The ad has been widely pilloried ever since Glenn Kessler discovered that her premiums […]
In light of some of the comments to my post yesterday arguing that that the real reason that healthcare insurance companies are now madly encouraging Obamacare enrollment is fear of a pro-public-option or pro-single-payer political juggernaut, I want to make clear that by single-payer I do not mean Medicare-for-all. Single-payer would be, in essence, “the […]
Mr. Obama also singled out sponsors of a “cynical ad campaign” discouraging Americans from signing up for the new health care program by arguing that it would effectively put the government into the room when women undergo gynecological exams and men undergo colonoscopies. “These are billionaires several times over,” Mr. Obama said, evidently referring to […]
by Maggie Mahar A New IOM Report Reveals Why Medicare Costs So Much (Hint–It’s Not Just the Prices) (reposted with authors permission) George W. Bush is 67. Chances are Medicare paid for the stent operation that I describe in the post above. For years, medical researchers have been telling us that this procedure will provide no […]
I was watching C span Washington Journal this morning. Rep Marsha Blackburn was the guest. I got to listen to her explanation of how the Social Security funds flow and just had to post the clip. Copied from the transcript of the clip: THEIRS MONEY THAT GOES TO MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY AND I THINK […]
An exchange between reader nitu mishra and me in the Comments thread this morning to this AB post of mine from yesterday. nitu mishra: Here’s a good article on 2012 Q4 earnings outlook. http://tinyurl.com/investing002 Me: Ah. If only I could actually understand graphs, without having to stare at them for ten minutes or so first, […]
On January 1, Congress approved a tax and spending bill to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that would have created deflationary pressure on the United States (though Yglesias questioned the conventional wisdom of whether it would necessarily cause a recession). Let’s take a look at the deal in […]