Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
For low-value medical care, it helps to have consumer skin in the game, but that isn’t what drives healthcare costs. Healthcare costs are driven by needed care and not the overuse of unneeded care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyY05fD9dk4
“After a few months in the program, Smith was no longer diabetic, and she has now been sober for two and a half years.
Her story highlights the success of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, which launched in North Carolina in March 2022. The program had benefits beyond health and quality-of-life improvements; researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill found the program saved $1,020 a year per recipient on health care costs, and the 38,000 participants had “significantly lower” emergency room visits than their peers.
The program was unique, funded with a five-year, $650 million federal grant approved by the first Donald Trump administration. The idea was to use fresh food, safe housing and transportation — social and economic factors that researchers say determine 80 percent of a person’s health — to improve the lives of the sickest, most expensive patients.
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But the Healthy Opportunities Pilot shows the limits of such food-based interventions in public policy. These programs often require longer-term investments, chafing against the cost-cutting instincts that characterize Trump’s second term and legislatures in most red states — the policy level at which most MAHA ideas are put into practice.
In the case of HOP, the Joe Biden administration approved a Medicaid waiver last December to continue the program in North Carolina, which Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, hoped to expand throughout the state over the next two years. But in June, the Republican-led state legislature declined to fund it. State lawmakers argue the program costs more than it saves — a claim that state policy experts dispute because of the way Republican lawmakers were calculating the numbers. These experts say the long-term savings potential was given short shrift.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/08/healthy-opportunities-pilot-medicaid-north-carolina-maha-00626465
“Don’t be fooled: The debt explosion is not driven by waste, fraud, or foreign aid. Nor is it the result of a lack of revenue. It’s the direct result of reckless promises to retirees, the cost of health care, and an unwillingness to pay the bills honestly. For most of American history, debt fell when wars ended and peace returned. Since 1980, we’ve managed the opposite: peace without prudence and prosperity without restraint.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/30/americas-30-trillion-publicly-held-debt-is-42-times-larger-than-it-was-in-1980/
Medicare Advantage costs the government more and too often fucks patients who need care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejoi9yfLVCc
“Senate Republicans will block a Democratic bill that would keep federal food aid flowing to 42 million Americans as they try to build pressure to reopen the government, Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday.
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Thune separately told reporters that if the Senate starts “going down the road of … take care of this group or that group … it just begs the larger question, how long is this going to drag on?”
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Democrats and even privately some Republican lawmakers argue the Trump administration has the legal authority to tap a $5 billion contingency fund, or other USDA funds, to ensure SNAP benefits keep flowing during the shutdown. Dozens of Democratic governors and attorneys general have sued the administration over its decision not to tap those funds.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/29/snap-benefits-set-for-first-ever-lapse-with-senate-set-to-reject-funding-patches-00627280
Arguments that we shouldn’t have Medicare for All because medically and scientifically incompetent people like Trump and RFK will gain power and make bad decisions…ignore that people in power like them can also influence private corporations to do healthcare the way they want, so that is a threat either way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTSUMD-VCqg
Military wife calls, concerned about her family’s healthcare as a result of the shutdown, and Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, just lies to her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjicMCmNc4
“Trump announced the next in a long line of vanity projects: TrumpRX, a forthcoming, federally branded website where Pfizer sells steeply discounted drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from his proposed 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Imagine a strip mall furniture store with a permanent, flashy 70-percent-off sale, masking the fact that prices were inflated in the first place. TrumpRx, slated to launch in early 2026, is no different—a government-run platform that promises savings while hiding costs.
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TrumpRx isn’t healthcare reform or even a program in any real sense. It’s a carve-out for one company. Under the agreement, Pfizer will list a large share of its primary care and select specialty drugs at deep discounts on a federal site that redirects patients to Pfizer’s direct-to-consumer checkout.
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The savings are shaky because that money has to come from somewhere. Part of it, certainly, is just the market advantage of being exempted from a 100 percent tax that all your competitors are forced to pay. Any savings beyond that will be carved out of something else—less research, higher prices on other drugs, or hidden costs buried elsewhere in the system.
And for most people, the ‘discounts’ aren’t really discounts. Roughly 90 percent of Americans are insured, and their co-pays are almost always cheaper than TrumpRx’s cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates—more than 60 percent off by law—so TrumpRx adds little there. That leaves the approximately 27 million uninsured Americans.
But even for the uninsured, the math falls apart: A $6,000 arthritis drug at “half price” is still $3,000 in cash, a stretch on any budget. Eucrisa at $162 on TrumpRx beats few insurance copays. And $499/month for Wegovy (semaglutide) on TrumpRx compares poorly to the $25 many insured patients now pay. And all of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. CVS, Walgreens, and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop-up that punts you to a manufacturer’s checkout page. TrumpRx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/02/trumprx-is-obamacare-in-trumps-handwriting/
“President Donald Trump has struck a multi-pronged deal with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to lower the price of some of the company’s medicines, while clearing a path for the drugmaker to receive a three-year reprieve from certain tariffs.
The drugmaker will participate in a new direct purchasing platform named TrumpRx.gov that will let American patients buy a “large majority” of its primary care treatments and “some select specialty brands” at a discount. Those drugs will be offered at “savings that will range as high as 85% and on average 50%,” Pfizer said in a press release Tuesday.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/pfizer-trump-strike-drug-pricing-deal-00587993
Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/18/trump-gop-healthcare-cuts-00569743