18
votes
A huge threat to the US budget has receded. No one is sure why (A decade of Medicare spending growth and projections)
Link information
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- Title
- A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. And No One Is Sure Why.
- Published
- Sep 5 2023
- Word count
- 1124 words
This seems pretty persuasive to me. Statins have been a game changer. I'm in a group chat with a few doctors and one of them grimly joked while were talking about Mitch McConnell that maybe we should have waited to invent them until after the Boomers died of.
I did find it odd that they framing the slowing down of breakthrough technologies as "slowing improvements in life expectancy" that is "bad news for seniors" though. That seems like the author thinks humans are sort of entitled to live ever longer lives year over year which is, I dunno, odd?
Infinite growth extrapolated everywhere. Immortality is inevitable in their eyes.
The real bad news is if these meds cease being readily and cheaply available, like insulin.
That seems unnecessarily nitpicky. "Bad" is not exactly a strong descriptor - how is that not a bad thing? It certainly isn't a good thing. Just because it's bad doesn't mean it's catastrophic. It'd be better if live expectancy was increasing, no?
There is no such thing as an absolute measure of good or bad; only a relative one: this is better (or worse) than that. When somebody says 'this is good' without qualification, they are implicitly comparing to something—that is the neutral, the default, the null hypothesis—what you would expect. If your default is that no medical technology is developed, then if no medical technology is developed, that's neither good nor bad; but if medical technology is developed, that's good. If your default is that medical technology will continue to be developed, then if it stops, that's bad.
In particular, I disagree with the parent's mention of entitlement. It's not a question of whether you think medical technology should be developed, but whether you think it will.
Hence, it's purely a semantic issue. But surely no one will disagree that it's better if medical technology is developed then if it isn't.
I think American culture struggles to deal with death and dying in a healthy way and that phrase was really indicative of the mentality of it being a problem that must be solved rather than a natural part of life.
Man, I can't wait to see what doomers say to this. This is probably the best news we could get as that generation starts to retire it means we may actually see Medicare when we retire.
The US is great at innovating ways out of its problems.
The only thing we really need to do now is maintain strong immigration and make it easier to have kids to solve even more of our problems.
Sorry to pick nits, but is it necessary to call out “doomers” in your first sentence? I’m not sure who that group is (maybe cynical folks?), but I don’t think that singling them out will lead to interesting and varied discussions on Tildes. Imo of course.
Re. the article, I can’t read it, but if the conclusion is that statins and socialized health care is making a demonstrable impact on health outcomes, then yeah that’s fantastic!
Doomers are basically anyone who finds a way to make something a negative thing no matter what (when it comes to optimism of the future)
For example a doomer would look at news like "Scientists finds cure for cancer in dogs" and react like "oh great, now all the dogs are gonna die of diabetes"
At least that's my interpretation of the term haha
Aah, that makes sense, thanks — I can see how that’d get grating pretty quick :)
It would be glorious if morbidity was going down for Medicare subscribers to that extent, but I think the story is more complicated. The more the law intervenes to control Medicare prices, the more ways our opaque health system finds the money elsewhere.
There's a very illuminating chart here: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/#Cumulative%20growth%20in%20per%20enrolled%20person%20spending%20by%20private%20insurance,%20Medicare,%20and%20Medicaid,%202008-2021%C2%A0
"Cumulative growth in per enrolled person spending by private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid, 2008-2021" shows that the cost of expenditures paid through private health insurance has bulged pretty much in direct proportion to the stabilized cost of Medicare, and the diminishing expenditures through Medicaid.
There have been many stories covering inflated hospital costs to privately insured and uninsured people, allegedly to maintain services in the face of public insurance underpayments. That's not stopping closures of rural hospitals, but the hospital chains remain in the black.