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.
…
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
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.
…
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?”
…
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
“The ongoing federal shutdown could cost the U.S. economy between $7 billion and $14 billion, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/29/congress/shutdown-talks-thune-democrats-snap-deadline-00626811
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
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
“The sum of statistical lives saved vastly exceeds the number of actual lives.
Think of all the things that have saved your life. Every breath you take, every heartbeat, every car and lightning bolt that didn’t hit you. Yet, you’re only alive once. Even if we restrict ourselves to the effects of government programs, the total statistical lives saved by all programs is far greater than the population.
…
Wyse and Meyer only show one side of the ledger—the reduction in mortality among people who gain Medicare eligibility. On the other side are the statistical lives lost from the people the money is taken from, or the programs cut.
…
Counting statistical lives saved or lost is a debased currency, because it counts each actual life multiple times. And citing only the good side of the ledger makes it impossible to evaluate.
…
after the Medicaid expansion, total expenditures increased by more than $1 trillion. That spending also costs statistical lives
…
the money could have remained in taxpayers’ bank accounts, which also could promote good health. Mortality declines with income. Even if the Medicaid expansion were a cost-effective way to improve mortality, you have to consider the other side of the ledger.
…
The lifesaving medical measures with the biggest impact, such as vaccinations and antibiotics, are relatively cheap. The Medicaid expansion may have relieved financial stress and made the program’s beneficiaries more physically comfortable, which are better criteria for evaluating its impact.
Now consider the 2013 NEJM study trumpeted by conservatives, which examined various health measures. It found that Medicaid enrollment resulted in large and statistically significant improvements in patients’ subjective estimates of their health and quality of life, as well as significant reductions in their financial stress. But it did not find a statistically significant impact on mortality.
…
The two studies are more valuable in combination than individually. The NEJM study had the advantage of random assignment and detailed individual data. The NBER paper had a much larger sample size and time interval. Both found significant benefits to Medicaid recipients, although they did not establish that these benefits were any greater than could have been obtained by simply giving each recipient several thousand dollars per year. Neither study convincingly answered whether Medicaid improved health or saved statistical lives.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/debunking-the-100000-medicaid-deaths-myth/
Work requirements on Medicaid will rob many people of health insurance because many will fail to do the burdensome paperwork to prove they are working.
Doctor has seen people die from preventable ailments because the people couldn’t afford to get care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGTbKOWu88
“Tillis — who voted against the bill in a key procedural vote Saturday night and announced Sunday he would not run for reelection — delivered a scathing rebuke of the president’s agenda-setting bill in a Senate floor speech, explaining his position and pledging to withhold his vote unless his concerns about drastic cuts to Medicaid are addressed.
“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys? I think the people in the White House … advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise,” Tillis said in his floor speech.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tillis-senate-bill-breaks-trump-024237867.html