The Angry Bear

Medicare Advantage Over Payments In the conclusive summation of the latest KFF report on Medicare Advantage Healthcare plans which KFF also has in place, is this: Historically, one goal of the Medicare Advantage program was to leverage the efficiencies of managed care to reduce Medicare spending. However, the program has never generated savings relative to traditional Medicare. In fact, the opposite is true. As a result, Medicare Advantage...

Book Review: “Slouching Towards Utopia,” J. Bradford DeLong, (foreignaffairs.com), Liaquat Ahamed I am not going to put all of the review of Brad’s book Slouching Towards Utopia here. I thought I would alert AB readers to it and point to the freebie (for me at least and I believe you too) review at Foreign Affairs. Brad DeLong’s highly anticipated economic history of the twentieth century, Slouching Towards Utopia, begins with the reminder that...

Introduction to a Real World Issue: Taken from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Health (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Health disparities are gaps in the quality of health and health care mirroring differences in socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic background, and education level. These disparities may stem from many factors, including accessibility of health care, increased risk of disease from occupational...

As I have said before, I get many things in my In-Box. Beckers Healthcare ASC News Review is one of them. If you do not know what an ASC is, I have included a definition. U of M Hospital has a few of the around Ann Arbor. Ambulatory Surgery Center = modern health care facilities focused on providing same-day surgical care, including diagnostic and preventive procedures. The stats in this news clip I thought were interesting enough to post...

Have new home sales made a bottom?  – by New Deal democrat Hopefully you are recovering from your turkey coma today. Here’s a little late commentary on Wednesday’s new home sales report. New home sales are noisy, and heavily revised, which is why I prefer housing permits, and especially single family housing permits, as a source of information. But . . . on the other hand, new home sales tend to be the very first housing metric that...

Jobless claims have a poor week, rising to multi-month highs  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims for jobless benefits rose 17,000 this week to 240,000, a 3 month high. The 4 week average also rose by 5,500 to 226,750. Continuing claims one week ago rose 48,000 to 1,551,000, the highest number since March: While one week like this shouldn’t set off any alarm bells, initial claims has been one of the increasingly few positive short leading...

I expect the issues in the Republican led Maricopa County will take a while to resolve as there will be an election recount. AG candidate Abraham Hamadeh will require answering. His wish for the state to declare him the winner before a recount will need answering too. Doubt it. In Don’t Cry for Arizona Yet, We Are Getting There, I wrote about Maricopa County which is just north of where I live. Just a refresher: Moving on . . . To the north...

I hope this finds you well, with friends and family, or at least with strangers to celebrate. Be safe. We will catch up with you on Friday. Feel free to chat below. Regards. Dan Tags: Thanksgiving

“Student loan repayment pause extended while waiting for debt relief,” (qz.com), Ananya Bhattacharya Student loan repayments were set to restart in the new year of 2023 if not forgiven. Another six more months breathing room has been granted before those repayments start again. The US Department of Education (DoE) announced the extension on November 22. The original moratorium was to coincide with the Biden administration’s student loan...

“The Bell: When Economic Distress Becomes Terrorism,” thebell.blogspot.com, “Tom Dinger” What has changed since February 24, 2010? Have things gotten any better since then or 911? Are we still looking at an economic sinkhole for many people? In the last two years, programs were put in place to rescue people in spite of politics. What do you see? Tom’s point, I believe, is people can be driven to do irrational things. The anger coming when they...