The Angry Bear

This is an interesting take on small hospitals and also covering smaller hospitals in small towns or rural areas. It is an issue as the larger hospitals buy them up. Rather than invest in them, they close them down. One reveal is those hospitals closings coming as a result of what private insurance pays for patient care. This is an issue which both state and federal governments. should be addressing. Why are 600+ rural hospitals at risk of...

The consumer may finally be faltering  – by New Deal democrat At this point I think the “smart” econ take is that either any recession is very much delayed, or even not going to happen at all. While everything is possible, I’ve argued in several places that if you date a potential business cycle peak to January of this year, the data doesn’t look so rosy. To wit, below is a graph with all of the main monthly data series the NBER has said it...

Does AI pose a meaningful existential threat to humanity?  If an existential threat is one that can lead to mass death or human extinction, and a risk of extinction is meaningful if it is (say) at least 10% as large as the risk of a nuclear holocaust, my answer is that I have no idea.   But it seems clear that AI does pose a serious threat to democratic stability.  It will give anti-democratic actors a powerful new tool for spreading political...

Angry Bear had written about the forthcoming state Medicaid-Purge the later part of May. The reason for the purge of many Medicaid enrollees was the ending of Joe Biden’s pandemic Medicaid enrollment program. It was a much needed program during the pandemic if one could not afford healthcare insurance and did not have Medicaid. Not being able to afford healthcare insurance was not the only gain from Medicaid. The extension of Medicaid postpartum care...

A grouping of eclectic topics spread across various subtitles supposedly giving them some organization. These show up in my In-Box and I leave them their till I clean up the collection Energy and Business A Beginner’s Guide to Plastic-Free Living, treehugger.com, Katherine Martinko. “You need to write a step-by-step guide to giving up plastic.” Electric Vehicles Have a Public-Charging Problem, The Atlantic, Patrick George. Driving from...

Scenes from the May employment report: leading indicators and the big picture  – by New Deal democrat As I wrote Friday, the May employment report was deeply bifurcated, with a strong Establishment survey, but a weak Household survey.   Let’s take a look at some of that bifurcation, focusing on the leading indicators. There are 4 leading indicators in the Establishment portion of the report: manufacturing, residential construction, and...

LOL ~ Don’t Say Stay …, Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears For a year and ten days I’ve been calling on Disney to Walk. A. Way You don’t need Florida and its Marielito government, in violation of contracts and agreements dating sixty years. Shut it down, walk away. You’ve made your pile, you don’t need it, unload the liability before it becomes a bigger liability. Send all those voters to the unemployment line, tourorists home...

No one has accepted real responsibility for the East Palestine disaster, The Guardian, Zsuzsa Gyenes A noticeable chemical odor three months later – yet the town and surrounding residents still has to fight for accountability from Norfolk Southern as told by Zsuzsa. The Ohio Republican governor Mike DeWine is sitting back waiting for the East Palestine residents to tire of their efforts for more help. The accident has not been declared a disaster...

Value-Based Payment Is the New For-Profit Health Care Industry first appeared at Angry Bear as written by Kip Sullivan, Kay Tillow, & Ana Malinow. This came after it appeared at Truthout. I reposted this one commentary and an early one by Kip because I am starting to see more activity on Value Based medicine. It is worthwhile to go over again. Before I get started on the main text of Kip’s expert article, I wish to point out something which is...

An April 20th commentary pulled off of Steve Hutkins’ “Save the Post Office Blog.” Prof. Hutkins tracks what is going on with the USPS, what PG Louis DeJoy is up to, and the transition of the USPS to what DeJoy believes is a profit center and supposedly better than the present. Except the plan is not better. PG Louis Dejoy should be replaced which can only be done by the Board of Commissioners. The last time I checked, Biden could replace two...