Should a rich person on Medicare buy supplemental insurance?

by philg

A friend is turning 65. If he can easily afford the co-pays (20 percent for most things), does it make sense for him to buy insurance to supplement Medicare?

From a reasonably wealthy consumer’s point of view, the main advantage of health insurance in the U.S. is that the insurance company will defend against the providers’ attempts to steal via fake rates. See America’s Efficient Health Care System: my $15 bill for a checkup (2010), in which the doctor charges a fictitious $510 fee for a checkup that is actually valued at $83 (the insurance company’s “negotiated rate”). If you don’t have insurance, you will be attacked by the health care industry with rates that are 5-10X higher than what 95% of patients are paying. No other part of the U.S. economy works like this and I am not even sure how it is legal. The fictitious prices aren’t quoted to the patient in advance. How can it be legal to hit someone with a bill for 5-10X the real price after the visit? If you take your car in for dealer service and the dealer can’t reach you to get authorization for replacing the bald tires, the dealer can’t charge you $5,000 for a set of tires that 95 percent of the dealer’s customers are paying $500 for, right?

[Related question: Why is the uninsured rate only $510 for an $83 service? Why isn’t it $5,100, for example? The insurance company will still pay $83 and the uninsured can be pursued for $5,100. There isn’t a better rational basis for $510 versus $5,100 or vice versa.]

So… if this guy and his wife will be on Medicare, which is doing the negotiation dance with providers, if he doesn’t buy supplemental coverage is there any circumstance in which he’ll be exposed to this kind of systemic crime by the U.S. health care industry? Or will Medicare always negotiate a normal rate for him even if he ultimately has to pay whatever Medicare has negotiated? (In the latter case, it doesn’t make sense for him to buy insurance because he doesn’t need the insurance part of the insurance.) Is there any convenience benefit to having supplemental insurance, e.g., one doesn’t get annoyed via mail with $10 or $15 hardcopy bills?

A couple of Medicare beneficiaries and their pup, enjoying a misty day at the beach in Hilton Head, South Carolina (January 2021):

And the South Carolina license plate motto (“While I Breathe, I Hope”), perfect for the Age of COVID-19:

Also of interest from Hilton Head…

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We will solve our affordable housing crisis with vastly expanded immigration

by philg

From the New York Times, a tireless cheerleader for more low-skill immigration into the U.S…. “Pandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling Up”:

Even before last year, about 11 million households — one in four U.S. renters — were spending more than half their pretax income on housing, and overcrowding was on the rise. By one estimate, for every 100 very low-income households, only 36 affordable rentals are available.

When your hospitals are 110 percent full, the solution is more immigration. When there are 3X as many people who need affordable housing compared to the supply, the solution is more immigration.

One block back from the sand in Atlantic Beach, Florida:

(in other words, migrants are welcome, but not the big concrete condo and apartment buildings that could actually house an expanded population; note that signs of virtue/justice were extremely rare in Florida (January 2021 trip) compared to here in Maskachusetts; I took this photo because it was an unusual scene)

Related:

  • “Hunter Biden and wife Melissa upsize into $25k-a-month canal-front home in Venice, California” (Daily Mail): “Interestingly the homeless people who were living up along the street he now lives on are gone. … His two-year-old daughter with stripper Lunden Roberts, 29, was not present. … The stylish 3,700 square feet home boasts 25-foot acoustic ceilings hanging over contemporary limestone white floors in the living room.” (a fairly spacious house; will Hunter Biden be willing to dedicate a spare bedroom to housing one of the migrant families that his father tells Americans it is their responsibility to shelter?)
  • “Turned Back by Italy, Migrants Face Perilous Winter in Balkans” (NYT, today): “To escape persecution in his homeland, a 27-year-old Pakistani man walked over mountains and through woods on an arduous 18-month journey across Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia until he finally reached the Italian border.” (the remaining 216 million people in Pakistan must suffer continued persecution? Italians don’t want to solve their own hospital and housing overcrowding situation by taking in more migrants?)
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Thanks to Biden, we can get booze and dope after hours here in Maskachusetts

by philg

With science-informed leadership in the White House, Maskachusetts residents are now marked safe from late-night alcohol and marijuana, according to the governor’s 62nd executive order (dated January 21, 2021, a day after the Most Blessed Event):

Related:

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Is it time for the British to beg their way back into the European Union?

by philg

I’m sure that we can all agree that the working class in Britain shot themselves in the feet by not listening to the elites when it was time for the 2016 Brexit vote. Now that we’ve learned more about science and realize that the only important function of a government is protecting subjects from COVID-19 (corollary to the only important function of a human being to avoid coronavirus infection), let’s look at the vaccination rate in the UK (18 per 100) versus the abandoned EU (4 per 100):

In light of these data, when would be the optimum time for the Brits to rejoin the EU?

Related:

  • Linguistic impact of the Brexit? (a Jennifer’s lawsuit to cash out from her marriage is referred to as “the Jexit”)
  • “Solidarity Is Not an Easy Sell as E.U. Lags in Vaccine Race” (NYT, today): There is no doubt that the European Union bungled many of the early steps to line up vaccines. It was slower off the mark, overly focused on prices while the United States and Britain made dollars and pounds no object, and it succumbed to an abundance of regulatory caution. All those things have left the bloc flat-footed as drugmakers fall behind on their promised orders. But the 27 countries of the European Union are also attempting something they have never tried before and have broken yet another barrier in their deeper integration — albeit shakily — by choosing to cast their lot together in the vaccine hunt. With just over 3 percent of E.U. nationals having received at least one dose of a vaccine by the end of last week, in stark contrast to Britain’s 17 percent and the United States’ 9 percent, nowhere does the lag sting more than in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy and de facto leader.
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Best Super Bowl commercials?

by philg

What are folks’ favorite Super Bowl commercials so far? (with YouTube links if possible)

My favorite is this Jeep commercial in which Bruce Springsteen (arrested in November 2020 for “suspicion of driving while intoxicated”) says “As for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few, it belongs to us all, whoever you are, wherever you’re from.”

Residents of California and Maskachusetts certainly have the freedom to follow their respective governors’ orders to stay home, educate their children themselves (while paying taxes to fund still-closed schools), fill out mandatory travel forms telling friendly government officials where they’ve been, supply medical records to the government when asked (or pay a $7,000 per-person fine), etc. (See this ranking of states by coronapanic restrictions.)

Jeep also reminds us that these are the “ReUnited States” now that a single party controls Congress and the White House and can do whatever it wants to people who voted for the other party.

Could it be that Jeep is lobbying for a handout from the unifying Biden administration now that the Kia Telluride is on the Car and Driver 10Best list rather than a Jeep?

And what do football connoisseurs think of the game?

Some photos from Tampa… Bern’s Steakhouse (if you have a craving for an Impossible Burger within a week of eating at Bern’s, I will pay for your soy and coconut oil mishmash):

A billboard offering “wife insurance” next to an, um, gentleman’s club:

A Grumman Widgeon at Sun n Fun (April 2021, supposedly!) in nearby Lakeland (sacred to Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts):

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California schoolteacher goes back to work

by philg

A young healthy vaccinated unionized schoolteacher finally feels safe enough to return to work in Los Angeles:

Photo by Phill Magakoe and actually from “South Africa Halts Use of AstraZeneca Vaccine” (NYT):

South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine on Sunday after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical-trial participants from mild or moderate illness caused by the more contagious virus variant that was first seen there.

Scientists in South Africa said on Sunday that a similar problem held among people who had been infected by earlier versions of the coronavirus: the immunity they acquired naturally did not appear to protect them from mild or moderate cases when reinfected by the variant, known as B.1.351.

Remember that (1) Republicans are idiots because they don’t believe in evolution; (2) We need to stay shut down only until the vaccines become available because the virus can never evolve its way around the vaccines and therefore vaccines will terminate the pandemic.

(Corollary to the above: The Swedish MD/PhDs who, back in February 2020 said that coronavirus would be with us forever and therefore you shouldn’t take any public health measures that you couldn’t keep in place for decades, were definitely wrong.)

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If coronascientists can’t predict the future, why do we call their predictions scientific?

by philg

From yesterday’s post on Israel…

For comparison, how about the U.S. case count, plunging since January 1, 2021 despite no changes in policy or significant numbers of people vaccinated (from NYT):

And the plunging hospitalizations, which presumably should lead to a plunge in deaths (since the only thing worse than death is death without Medicare being billed for a hospital stay):

Given that Americans did not change their behavior or policies during the time period covered, coronascience that is actually “scientific” should have been able to predict this peak and subsequent downward trend, right?

Let’s look at what our nation’s greatest scientist (at age 80), Dr. Fauci, said to state-sponsored media just a month before the peak. “Fauci Warns Of ‘Surge Upon A Surge’ As COVID-19 Hospitalizations Hit Yet Another High” (NPR, November 29):

“We may see a surge upon a surge,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “We don’t want to frighten people, but that’s just the reality. We said that these things would happen as we got into the cold weather and as we began traveling, and they’ve happened.”

With the December holidays just around the corner and more people traveling, “it’s going to happen again,” Fauci said. “We’re getting into colder weather and an even larger holiday season.”

The December holidays happened. More people actually did travel: “U.S. air travel reached post-March peak on day before Christmas Eve, TSA data shows” (NBC). Positive tests (“cases”) are half what they were when these superspreading travel events occurred.

From the Official Magazine of Trump Hatred (New Yorker, November 12, 2020)… “The Pandemic’s Winter Surge is Here,” by “Dhruv Khullar, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, is a practicing physician and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College”:

Unless we put mitigating measures in place, the coronavirus will spread, and sooner than we expect it will get out of control. The only way to avoid mass death is to move quickly and decisively, flattening the curve through masks, distance, testing, tracing, and lockdowns until a vaccine and therapies can avert the suffering caused by covid-19. Passivity is the enemy. The winter surge is here; we decide what happens next.

(Note that science-following humans are in charge of the virus: we decide what happens next.)

None of these things were done, except maybe in California and Maskachusetts, yet the surge that concerned the “scientist” dissipated, apparently due to factors unrelated to human actions.

Here’s Florida “case” curve, with a decline starting just as the snowbirds arrived for Christmas:

Florida is a state with no mask law:

Florida recommends but does not require face coverings for the general public. Several cities and large counties, including Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Hillsborough (which includes Tampa), have mask requirements, but local governments are barred from assessing fines and penalties for noncompliance under a Sept. 25 executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Floridians have rejected what the rest of us call science. Schools are open for in-person instruction (with some objections and lawsuits from science-following unionized teachers). Restaurants are open. Clubs are open. Offices are open. After-school sports for children are open and unmasked. People gather in large groups for social purposes. Even in supermarkets staffed by and catering to the elderly, workers and customers may be unmasked (CNBC). Here’s a January 2020 photograph from a club in Miami, in which people greeted each other with hugs and kisses:

If “scientists” failed yet again in their predictions, why are they still called “scientists”? What has distinguished astronomy from astrology, for example, is the superior predictive power of astronomy. Astronomy also gets better every year. Have we seen any improvement in the ability or people who claim to have scientific insight regarding coronavirus to predict epidemic statistics?

[My personal explanation for the plunge in U.S. “cases”: Back in October, Joe Biden promised that he would shut down the virus. What we’re seeing is simply President Biden delivering on his campaign promise a little earlier than expected (i.e., starting three weeks before taking power).]

Related:

  • Did doom visit the Swedes yesterday as planned? (May 24: On May 3, in “Doom for the wicked Swedes is always three weeks away”, the IHME prophecy for Sweden was a peak in ICU usage on May 22 and a peak in deaths (494/day) on May 23. What actually happened? Yesterday’s WHO report showed 54 new deaths. The day before it was 40. In other words, the prophecy was off by a factor of 10. They were going to need nearly 4,400 ICU beds. The actual number in ICUs all around Sweden? About 340. In other words, the “scientists” were off by a factor of 13X.)
  • How is coronaplague down in Brazil? (and the rest of the IHME predictions) (August 5; the June 10 prediction of the “scientists” was off by 10X).
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How are FBI agents almost always able to avoid being killed?

by philg

“2 F.B.I. Agents Killed in Shooting in Florida” (NYT):

The sun had not come up yet on Tuesday when a group of F.B.I. agents assigned to investigate criminals who prey on children online approached the Water Terrace apartments in Sunrise, Fla., to execute a search warrant, a routine part of the job that is always fraught with risk.

What exactly happened in the ensuing minutes is unknown, but a gun battle broke out, rousting neighbors out of bed in the quiet residential community. Law enforcement officials called emergency dispatchers. Multiple shots fired, they reported. Send air rescue.

Two F.B.I. agents died and three more were injured in one of the deadliest shootings in the bureau’s history. No agent had been shot and killed on duty since 2008. A similarly bloody shootout took place in a Miami suburb 35 years ago, killing two F.B.I. agents and injuring five others.

A sad outcome, obviously, but the history is much more cheerful than what we see in Hollywood portrayals of the FBI, in which the pursued quite often manage to kill at least some of their pursuers.

The FBI has 35,000 employees, of whom more than 13,400 are “special agents” (Wikipedia). How did they manage to go 13 years without a Hollywood-style event in which an agent was killed?

From a recent flight up the U.S. coast, KFLL and the condo forest of Ft. Lauderdale:

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If the vaccine works, why isn’t the plague over in Israel?

by philg

[February 11 update: Only five days later, some more data… “It works: 0 deaths, only 4 severe cases among 523,000 fully vaccinated Israelis” (Times of Israel, but no information in the article regarding how old and/or sick this population of 523,000 folks was (maybe the kinds of folks who are typically killed by COVID-19 are not part of this HMO)).]

Israel is mostly vaccinated at this point, yet the coronaplague is subsiding at only roughly the rate we’d expect for a country in lockdown. (Israel went into its third lockdown in December and, of course, the country is fully masked as well.)

Here are some charts:

Shouldn’t we expect a discontinuity in hospitalizations if the vaccine is working as advertised?

How about deaths, the most reliable statistic?

How do we explain these banal curves given the widespread use of the revolutionary plague-ending vaccine?

For comparison, how about the U.S. case count, plunging since January 1, 2021 despite no changes in policy or significant numbers of people vaccinated (from NYT):

And the plunging hospitalizations, which presumably should lead to a plunge in deaths (since the only thing worse than death is death without Medicare being billed for a hospital stay):

Related:

  • If COVID-19 vaccines weren’t tested on likely COVID-19 victims, how do we know that they will reduce COVID-19 deaths? (December 27, 2020)
  • NYT regarding Israel: “The new Israeli research looked at national health statistics for people 60 years and older, who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine first because of their high risk. Analyzing data from six weeks into the vaccination campaign, when the majority of people that age had been vaccinated, they found that the number of new Covid-19 cases dropped by 41 percent compared to three weeks earlier. That group also experienced a 31 percent drop in hospitalizations from the coronavirus, and a drop of 24 percent of those who became critically ill.” (i.e., despite a national lockdown, they had 76 percent as many “critically ill” among their newly vaccinated population compared to the no-lockdown no-vaccine situation).
  • Don’t share this on Facebook… “Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims.” (NYT, February 8): “Building trust and confidence in these vaccines is critical, so we’re launching the largest worldwide campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as vaccines become available to them,” Kang-Xing Jin, head of health at Facebook, said in a company blog post.
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Save lives by limiting cars to 35 mph?

by philg

Following up on Why do we care about COVID-19 deaths more than driving-related deaths? (March 26, 2020) … by shutting down for a year we’ve spent way more per life-year in our attempt to reduce coronaplague deaths than I ever could have imagined. If we infer from this how much saving a life-year is worth to us, it would be rational to limit cars and tracks, nearly all of which are electronically controlled, to 35 mph. Consider that most people who die in car accidents had many decades of life expectancy in front of them, unlike the typical 82-year-old victim of COVID-19.

An SUV-driving suburban Bostonite who runs his own law practice (representing workers’ compensation plaintiffs who aren’t typically expert computer users and who therefore prefer to meet in person): “I go to work every day at 80 miles per hour.”

Obviously setting the speed limit to 35 mph and relying on police enforcement wouldn’t work. For one thing, our heroic law enforcement officers don’t want to interact with potential COVID carriers (all who want to be vaccinated have been vaccinated, but many refused the experimental (“investigational”) vaccines and it is unknown whether the vaccines work against variants).

Most states have annual inspection requirements. How about insisting that engine control software be updated in order to get an inspection sticker? The update will prevent the car from exceeding 35 mph. New cars, obviously, can be limited via regulation.

How can Presidents Biden and Harris sell this to the American people? “You were happy to sit at home for a year when we told you it might save lives. You can wait an extra 10 minutes to get to Walmart.”

A potential #resistance household in Key West:

And these two in Miami may need a long spell in the re-education camp:

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