Article Contends Healthcare could be 80 to 90% Cheaper Based on Direct labor Costs

I found this very interesting:

Post-apocalyptic life in American health care

80 to 90% off
Yes, that’s my best guess. I do the analysis by considering a particular medical service, finding out roughly how much a person providing it gets paid per year, and dividing by how long it takes to do to get the direct labor cost; finding out the cost of the equipment used and amortizing it; and adding in an estimate of the overhead (cost of the building and a reasonable level of administrative work). I’m reasonably skilled at this sort of analysis as a consequence of having run small businesses.Estimates may vary, but everyone seems to agree that heath care is way more expensive than what you’d expect based on this sort of analysis. No one seems to know why; or, put a different way, where the money all goes. Everyone who has studied the problem agrees that it’s highly mysterious. It’s clear that administrative costs are needlessly much higher in health care than elsewhere, but that’s probably not the only source of the discrepancy.

Robin Hanson's Call for Unbelievers to Adopt a Religion

People with religious beliefs, and associated behavior, consistently tend to have better lives. It seems that religious folks tend to be happier, live longer, smoke less, exercise more, earn more, get and stay married more, commit less crime, use less illegal drugs, have more social connections, donate and volunteer more, and have more kids. Yes, the correlation between religion and these good things is in part because good people tend to become more religious, but it is probably also in part because religions people tend to become better. So if you want to become good in these ways, an obvious strategy is to become more religious, which is helped by having more religious beliefs.

More data:

Depression is the leading cause of illness and disability in adolescence. Many studies show a correlation between religiosity and mental health, yet the question remains whether the relationship is causal. We exploit within-school variation in adolescents’ peers to deal with selection into religiosity. We find robust effects of religiosity on depression that are stronger for the most depressed. These effects are not driven by the school social context; depression spreads among close friends rather than through broader peer groups that affect religiosity. Exploration of mechanisms suggests that religiosity buffers against stressors in ways that school activities and friendships do not.

 …a one standard deviation increase in religiosity decreases the probability of being depressed by 11 percent.  By comparison, increasing mother’s education from no high school degree to a high school degree or more only decreases the probability of being depressed by about 5 percent.

Wondering Why People Voted for Trump

This is an old article but I am continually draw back to it. If you are wondering why people voted for Trump a good place to start is asking them.

Here is the only article that I have seen that asks: 
What Do Donald Trump Voters Actually Want?

I understand that is not the end of it because people lie and sometimes do not know themselves well enough to know why (see: Elephant-Brain, Matt 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9), but asking is a good place to start.

Misunderstanding The PPACA

Do Obamacare’s Left-Wing Critics Actually Understand It?

Few Democrats seem to appreciate it but the PPACA moved the USA reasonably close the systems in German, France and The Netherlands.

Also Democrats should play around with different incomes on the Healthcare.gov. The premium subsidies are pretty high. They should be happier than they are about the program as it is and stop asking for single payer. While single payer works reasonably well in Canada at the time being cost are still rising and could at some point cause some large dead weight losses.

Admittedly starting in 2019 the penalty for not having insurance is eliminated and that may or may not doom the program. Well will have to see.

BTW it seems top me that healthcare is a mess all over the world with Singapore being the best. See below:

80 to 90% off
Yes, that’s my best guess. I do the analysis by considering a particular medical service, finding out roughly how much a person providing it gets paid per year, and dividing by how long it takes to do to get the direct labor cost; finding out the cost of the equipment used and amortizing it; and adding in an estimate of the overhead (cost of the building and a reasonable level of administrative work). I’m reasonably skilled at this sort of analysis as a consequence of having run small businesses.

Estimates may vary, but everyone seems to agree that heath care is way more expensive than what you’d expect based on this sort of analysis. No one seems to know why; or, put a different way, where the money all goes. Everyone who has studied the problem agrees that it’s highly mysterious. It’s clear that administrative costs are needlessly much higher in health care than elsewhere, but that’s probably not the only source of the discrepancy."

Not Only the EU but the USA Should have More than One Currency

I quote Arnold Kling about a quote of Paul  Krugman

The quote:

fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do.

Don’t peek at the answer, which is below the fold.
Hint 1: You may have read the essay by following a link from Marginal Revolution (but I came across the essay earlier from a different link).
Hint 2: I find much to agree with in the essay.

The writer is not otherwise known for libertarian dog-whistling.

Before I looked I guessed an MMTer like Simon Wren-Lewis.

But I agree with Paul Krugman that this is not a problem. On the other hand I think competitive private currencies (also) would be more stable. The problem that I see is people in developed countries  trust Government currency to much and so horde it in a down turn exacerbating the problem, making it so when one bank fails rather than strengthening competing banks it weakens them.

I also think the USA and the EU are too big to each have a single currency. That is because mismanagement by a single central bank, like in 2008 can significantly, hurt the world economy too much. The USA could have 4 or five regional banks and currencies.

Florida Number One in School Measure

Is Florida number one in education? I don't think that there are significant differences between states in education quality, but this is fun for us who live in Florida.

Nevertheless go Florida! We're number one.

Do Workers Get The Same Slice of the Pie They Always Have

I think I saw this same argument from Dean Baker who is considered more left but who I consider willing to look honestly at the data but I cannot find the Baker post.
Her is Scott Winship on the same: 

Workers Get The Same Slice of the Pie As They Always Have

Of the issues Scott mentions I think Dean mostly talked about this: 

Use net GDP to compute productivity rather than GDP, so that income taking the form of depreciation--which does not go to workers or owners but will simply affect future productivity--is excluded from productivity, and

 According to both of them, growth in inequality is mostly about wages. That is CEO's and people like LeBron James, plus on the lower end of the top 20% computer technicians and MD's pulling away from the lower 80% of earners.


I found the Dean Baker post here. The title is: The Struggle to Explain Things That Didn't Happen: The Non-Existent Shift Away from Wages

Also seehttps://twitter.com/swinshi/status/856839117979693056 https://twitter.com/swinshi/status/856839117979693056https://twitter.com/swinshi/status/85  6839117979693056