What a squirrely POS (whole segment worth a watch), timestamped: Oh, I forgot, what was the CBO score for infra again?
Are you talking to me with this bullshit? You’re a one-man fanboy Ken Langone Fan club. You’re acting like a teenage girl. Get out of here with the mythology of Ken Langone. I don’t have anything against him. He’s definitely a brilliant financier but he ain’t from the school of hard knocks - not that it would take anything away from him. He’s from Long Island.
Thank you Kyrsten: https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-drug-spurs-largest-medicare-price-hike-ever/ Dubious $56,000 Alzheimer’s drug spurs largest Medicare price hike ever The drug that could cost Medicare tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. Seniors throughout the US will see a hefty increase to their health care premiums next year thanks in large part to Biogen's Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm, which is priced at $56,000 per year and is not proven to be clearly effective at treating Alzheimer's. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Friday that the standard monthly premium for Medicare Part B will rise from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 in 2022, an increase of $21.60 or roughly 14.5 percent. It is the largest increase ever in terms of dollars and among the largest percentage increases in recent years. CMS officials said Friday that Aduhelm was responsible for about half of the rise in Part B premiums, according to the Associated Press. Though the CMS is still determining how it will cover Aduhelm under Part B, the agency said the prospect of paying for Aduhelm at all required "additional contingency reserves." "We must plan for the possibility of coverage for this high cost Alzheimer’s drug which could, if covered, result in significantly higher expenditures for the Medicare program," the CMS said. Generally, Medicare Part B covers medically necessary services, including doctors’ services and tests, such as lab tests, cancer screenings, diabetes screenings, and supplies. It also covers outpatient care, home health services, durable medical equipment—such as walkers—and some preventative services—such as flu shots—among other medical services. Biogen did not immediately respond to a comment request from Ars. Controversy In November 2020, a committee of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration voted nearly unanimously against FDA approval for Aduhelm. The data did not indicate the drug is effective, the committee concluded. Ten of 11 committee members voted against approval while one voted "uncertain." But in June of this year, the FDA approved the drug anyway. Outside experts quickly called the approval "disgraceful," and three experts on the FDA's advisory committee resigned in protest. A watchdog organization called for the ouster of FDA officials involved in the decision, and an investigative media report suggested overly chummy relations between Biogen and FDA review staff. About a month after the approval, the FDA's acting commissioner narrowed use of the drug and requested the Office of the Inspector General investigate the agency's decision. Meanwhile, Biogen had set the list price at $56,000 per year. Media analyses suggested that at that price, the drug could cost Medicare up to $334.5 billion per year, which is nearly half of the budget for the Department of Defense. A cost-effectiveness analysis by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review pegged a reasonable price for Aduhelm between $3,000 to $8,400 per year. Money problems The Medicare premium hike for 2022 is likely to fuel more frustration over Aduhelm and rekindle debate about Medicare price negotiation. In a statement Friday, Representative Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said: “Today’s announcement from CMS confirms the need for Congress to finally give Medicare the ability to negotiate lower prescription drug costs… Skyrocketing drug prices not only make it harder for seniors to afford the lifesaving drugs they need, but also drive up their health care premiums for doctors' visits and outpatient care…. We simply cannot wait any longer to provide real relief to seniors.” For now, the 2022 cost-of-living adjustments in seniors' Social Security benefits will handily offset the Medicare Part B premium increase. It's also still unclear just how many seniors will end up taking the drug. Amid all the controversy around Aduhelm's effectiveness, serious side effects, and pricing, several high-profile medical providers, such as the Cleveland Clinic and large health insurance providers, have said they will not administer or cover the drug. Uptake of Aduhelm has been slow. Stat news reported that just over 100 patients had received the drug in its first few months of availability. About 5.8 million Medicare-eligible adults have Alzheimer’s disease, and in 2017, about 2 million Medicare beneficiaries used an Alzheimer's treatment covered by Medicare. But, last month, Biogen reported that Aduhelm brought in just $300,000 in revenue between July and September, far below expectations. The New York Times reported that Wall Street analysts had forecast that Aduhelm would bring in at least $12 million in the third quarter.
Passed the House… If this bill gets through senate, then conference I think it will pretty much solidify Nancy Pelosi has the most powerful Speaker of the House in American history. And I know this will make a lot of right wingers flip their wigs but I’m talking about actually legislation passed with metrics like size, scope and impact. Democrats are moving with very thin majorities too.
Why does the media trumpet "Pelosi only brings a bill to the floor if she knows she has the votes" like it's some kind of badge of higher political acumen that only she can possess? How hard is it to count votes? You either have them or you don't. What I miss?
At least Mr. Langone used his deduction to help minorities get in medical school. Your lefty boys Bezos and Nadella, just sold tons of stock purely to beat Washington State's capital gains tax for next year. But that's ok I guess. But Nadella will also save on taxes by selling now rather than next year. Starting Jan. 1, the state of Washington will impose a 7% tax on capital gains over $250,000. Nadella could save up to $20 million in state taxes by selling ahead of the tax hike. Bezos could save up to $700 million in Washington state taxes because he sold before January.
https://readsludge.com/2021/11/29/health-insurance-and-pharma-lobbyists-max-out-to-the-dem-party/ Health Insurance and Pharma Lobbyists Max Out to the Dem Party The Senate braces for a showdown over expanding Medicare to include dental and vision benefits after healthcare industry lobbyists have bundled six-figure donations for Democrats’ campaign arms. AHIP has spent over $8.6 million on federal lobbying through the third quarter of this year, with the ADA adding over $1.6 million in spending through September, according to OpenSecrets. The industry-funded Better Medicare Alliance, which defends the existing Medicare Advantage system and opposes expansion of benefits, also reported $100,000 in lobbying in the second quarter, according to Senate records, in a disclosure signed by the group’s COO, Robin Goracke, previously a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employee focused on Medicare policy and a former Hill staffer.
Apologies. While this thread is about fiscal policy, I wanted an "economic" place to post this article about monetary policy. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/...oney-supply.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur Opinion Paul Krugman Wonking Out: Money Isn’t Everything Dec. 3, 2021, 2:48 p.m. ET Holiday shoppers outside of Macy’s department store in Manhattan in 1939.Credit...Bettmann/Getty Images By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist "On Wednesday, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress — always a chancy enterprise, because some politicians have strong opinions about monetary policy that have little to do with expertise or evidence. Sure enough, one Republican member of the House advised Powell to read Milton Friedman — which one suspects he has. I assume that the questioner was suggesting that printing money always causes inflation, which is the moral that casual readers of Friedman usually take from his work. "Powell’s response was good as far as it went. “The connection between monetary aggregates and either growth or inflation was very strong for a long, long time, which ended about 40 years ago …. It was probably correct when it was written, but it’s been a different economy and a different financial system for some time.” "What Powell didn’t point out was that while there was historically a strong correlation between growth in the money supply and other economic indicators, in many cases the causation ran from the economy to the money supply rather than the other way around. This was especially true during the Great Depression. And that matters, because Friedman’s claim that monetary policy caused the Depression was central to his whole argument that governments, not the private sector, are responsible for economic instability, that depressions are caused by governments, not the private sector. "To be sure, when governments print huge amounts of money to pay their bills, so that the money supply grows by hundreds or thousands of percent per year, high inflation is inevitable. Here, for example, is Brazil’s experience in the first half of the 1990s: Image Inflation, old style.Credit...FRED But matters are much less clear when monetary growth is less extreme. And the connection between monetary policy and either inflation or growth more or less disappears when interest rates are near zero — as they were during the Depression and have been again since 2008: Image Zero, again.Credit...FRED "Let’s talk about the 1930s. The U.S. economy plunged between 1929 and 1933; gross domestic product measured in dollars fell almost in half, reflecting both a huge drop in real output and large-scale deflation. This plunge was associated with a large drop in the money supply: Image Did the Fed do it?Credit...FRED Friedman insisted that the Fed was responsible for this monetary contraction, leading him to assert, for example in "Free to Choose,” a book he wrote with Rose Friedman, that “the depression was not produced by a failure of private enterprise, but rather by a failure of government.” "But if you read his argument carefully, it’s actually quite slippery, in fact borderline disingenuous. "For as Friedman knew perfectly well, what economists call the “money supply” is, as Powell said, a “monetary aggregate,” combining currency in circulation — pieces of green paper bearing portraits of dead presidents — with bank deposits. (There are several definitions of the money supply that differ in which deposits they count.) The Fed doesn’t directly control this aggregate. All it can do is determine the size of the “monetary base,” which is bank reserves plus currency. "And during the Depression, the monetary base didn’t shrink as the economy cratered — it actually grew, a lot: Image Money that went nowhere.Credit...FRED "Why, then, did the money supply shrink? Partly because bank failures made people nervous about the safety of bank deposits; partly because in a shrinking economy people and businesses needed less money on hand for doing business. That is, the economic implosion caused the decline in money rather than the other way around. "Friedman didn’t actually deny this. Although his rhetoric suggested that the Fed caused the slump, if you look closely at his analysis, it says that the Fed could have prevented the slump — a pretty big distinction. "And how could the Fed have prevented the slump, when a large increase in the monetary base didn’t seem to prevent a sharp decline in both the money supply and G.D.P.? Friedman’s claim was that if the Fed had engaged in sufficiently large purchases of government bonds, that is, if it had increased the monetary base even more — and if it had carried out those purchases early enough — it would have headed off the monetary collapse. "But he wasn’t very clear about how, exactly, that would have worked. When the Fed buys government debt from a bank, what does the bank do with the cash? In normal times, we might assume that the bank would lend it out to the private sector, helping to boost the economy. But in the Depression, interest rates were very low and the perceived risks high. Why wouldn’t banks have just sat on extra cash, adding it to their reserves? "Of course, we can’t rerun the history of the 1930s. As it happens, however, the 2008 financial crisis gave the Fed an opportunity to do what Friedman said it should have done in the 1930s. The Fed hugely expanded the monetary base, and banks … just added the money to their reserves: Image Cash piles up at the banks.Credit...FRED "So the Fed found itself in the classic position of “pushing on a string”: It could print money (well, actually create digital deposits, but never mind), but had no easy way to get that money into the economy. "To be fair, the Fed took some crucial actions to stabilize financial markets early on, and some economists believe that its asset purchases did help the economy. But extraordinary monetary expansion didn’t prevent a severe slump. And if we didn’t experience a full replay of the Great Depression, the main reason was probably that we were willing to run big budget deficits — that is, we were saved from a worse slump by the policies Friedman claimed were unnecessary. "So while Powell was right in saying that the correlation between money and growth broke down after 1980, monetarism — roughly speaking, the doctrine that says the money supply rules everything — was never supported by the evidence."