Day: April 11, 2025

The ‘Advantage’ Con

This is post for all my senior readers.

Daily we are bombarded by ads telling us all the ‘advantages’ of having Medicare Advantage plans….the problem is as I keep pointing out they are full of crap and are little more than a con job.

These plans taunt that we can get special coverage for hearing, vision and dental with these plans…..so how true is that?

As the privatized form of Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans advertise dental, vision, and hearing benefits not covered by traditional Medicare, but a recent analysis found that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries do not typically receive more of these supplemental services than traditional Medicare beneficiaries. Additionally, out-of-pocket spending was similar for most supplemental services.

The research led by a team from Mass General Brigham is published in JAMA Network Open.

“Medicare Advantage plans receive more money per beneficiary than traditional Medicare plans, but our findings add to the evidence that this increased cost is not justified,” said first author Christopher L. Cai, MD, who conducted this work as a resident in the Department of Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

For their study, Cai and his colleagues analyzed 2017–2021 data from two continuous surveys, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. In total, the investigators assessed information on 76,557 Medicare beneficiaries.

Only 54.2% of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries were aware of having Medicare Advantage while just 54.3% were aware of having vision coverage. Medicare Advantage enrollees were no more likely to receive eye examinations, hearing aids, or eyeglasses than traditional Medicare enrollees.

Out-of-pocket expenses for supplemental benefits were similar or modestly lower for Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare enrollees paid $205.86 and $226.12, respectively, for eyeglasses (9.0% less for Medicare Advantage); $226.82 and $249.98, respectively for dental visits (9.3% less for Medicare Advantage); and no differences for optometry visits or durable (a proxy for ), after adjusting for demographics.

Nationwide, Medicare Advantage plans’ annual spending on vision, dental services, and durable medical equipment totaled $3.9 billion, while enrollees spent $9.2 billion out-of-pocket for these services and other private insurers covered $2.8 billion.

In contrast, Medicare Advantage plans received $37.2 billion dollars annually more than taxpayers would have spent if beneficiaries had enrolled in traditional Medicare, a cost that is partially intended to fund supplemental benefit use.

“Supplemental benefits are a major draw to Medicare Advantage, but our findings show that people enrolled in Medicare Advantage have no better access to extra services than people in traditional Medicare, and that much of the cost comes out of their own pockets,” said senior author Lisa Simon, MD, DMD, assistant professor in the Division of General and Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

(medicalexpress.com)

These are profit generating cons…..yes I said ‘cons’….

The federal agency now headed by former television host Mehmet Oz announced Monday that it is substantially boosting payments to privately run Medicare Advantage plans, a boon for an industry notorious for overcharging taxpayers and denying patients necessary care.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is jacking up payments to Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by more than 5% for 2026—an increase of over $25 billion. That’s more than double the increase proposed by the Biden administration.

Health insurance company stocks jumped in response to the news of the Trump administration’s payment hike, with shares of UnitedHealth Group—the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans—rising more than 6% following the CMS statement.

Oz, whom the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed in a party-line vote last week, previously reported holding tens of millions of dollars worth of stock in companies with interests before CMS, including UnitedHealth.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group that campaigns against Medicare Advantage, said Monday that “privatized Medicare plans are denying patients the care they need, while defrauding the government of billions a year.”

“Trump is giving them even more taxpayer money,” the group wrote on social media. “Trump-Musk don’t care about ‘efficiency.’ They care about stealing our money.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-medicare-advantage-payments

Please research these plans if you are considering taking one…..arm yourself with information before you talk to the fat cat behind the insurance desk.

Do not fall prey to these vultures……it will cost more of your money and provide little coverage…..you have been warned.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Tariffs: The Real Story

***Note this is a rather lengthy post on the tariffs that the Trump Administration are so proud of and with the promise of a better tomorrow.  If you do not care that your life and livelihood are about to change and not for the better then this post will mean nothing to you….pass it by***

Donny’s tariffs are the promise of so much and all it will deliver will be higher prices making your life difficult while billionaires will make up like bandits and without guns.

Let’s begin with the ‘Tariff King”…..that is what Donny named Pres. McKinley because of hos imposing of tariffs back in the day….I explain McKinley’s policies in a previous post….

More Tariff Talk

Here is the real story of McKinley’s tariffs….

It is true that the self-styled “tariff man”—his political opponents preferred the more derisive “Napoleon of protection”—was the biggest public face of mercantilism during America’s high-tariff era of 1870–1912. As a congressman, he wrote what came to be known as the “McKinley tariff” of 1890, and as president he signed another increase in 1897.

But a funny thing happened after the U.S. came out of the Panic (and subsequent four-year depression) of 1893: Goosed by sharp increases in domestic iron and copper production, Americans had too many goods chasing too few consumers. And McKinley himself began agitating to tear down some of those trade barriers.

“What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad,” he said in September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. “The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past,” he continued. “The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable….If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?”

McKinley’s presidency was ended by an assassin’s bullet the very next day.  (please do not consider that option)

https://reason.com/2025/04/06/trump-is-wrong-about-mckinleys-tariff-legacy/

Donny has many promises around his ill advised tariffs and his calculations are in error….this analysis is issued by the AEI, a conserv think tank…..

Two scholars at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, found the White House used the wrong value when assessing the rate at which prices would change as a result of tariffs. The correct version of the formula uses price changes in the cost of imports, meaning how much it costs a U.S.-based company to buy a good from a foreign seller. Instead, the White House factored in the retail price change, which is what consumers pay.

That meant the formula was off by a factor of four, because the White House valued the elasticity of import prices at 0.25 when it should have been 0.945, according to AEI.

“It’s pretty bush league,” Stan Veuger, one of the AEI fellows, told Fortune in a phone call. “For such a big policy you’d expect a much higher level of professionalism.”

Using the wrong value rendered the formula inaccurate, according to Veuger and his coauthor Kevin Corinth.

“Now, our view is that the formula the administration relied on has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law,” Corinth and Veuger wrote. “But if we are going to pretend that it is a sound basis for U.S. trade policy, we should at least be allowed to expect that the relevant White House officials do their calculations carefully.”

Another AEI economist, Derek Scissors, went even further, saying the administration hadn’t made a mistake so much as intentionally fudged the math to get the outcome officials wanted.

“This whole thing was rigged,” Scissors said Monday on CNBC. “It was a manipulated way to get very high tariffs because President Trump wanted to announce very high tariffs.”

https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/trumps-tariff-formula-was-rigged-to-get-inflated-rates-and-it-used-the-wrong-value-for-one-of-its-variables-conservative-think-tank-says/

Donny has taunted is “Liberation Day’ as a miracle off K Street….but he is wrong on so many accounts.

…

Economically, Trump’s fixation on goods makes no sense. This view is not unique to the president (though he feels it unusually strongly). There is a broader fetishisation of manufacturing in many countries. One theory is that it is potentially ingrained in human thinking by pre-historic experiences of finding food, fuel and shelter dominating all other activities.

But for Trump, the thinking is likely related to a combination of nostalgia for a bygone (somewhat imagined) age of manufacturing, and concern over the loss of quality jobs that provide a solid standard of living for blue collar workers – a core part of his political base.

Nostalgia is not a sensible basis for forming economic policy. But the role emotions play in international affairs has been receiving more attention. It has been identified as an “emotional turn” (where the importance of emotion is recognised) in the discipline of international relations.

Of course, that’s not to say that the concern over jobs and the unequal effects of globalisation is misplaced. It is clear that blue-collar workers have suffered in the US (and elsewhere) for the last 40 to 50 years, with governments paying little attention to the decline.

https://theconversation.com/trump-thinks-tariffs-can-bring-back-the-glory-days-of-us-manufacturing-heres-why-hes-wrong-253991

All this from the ‘stable genius’ who supposedly went to the Wharton Business School at the Univ of Penn….but he actually shows a kindergarten approach to economics…..

President Donald Trump said that he hopes to erase the U.S. trade deficit with other countries—but anyone who understands economics knows that wouldn’t be a good thing.

…

A trade deficit isn’t a “loss,” regardless of what Trump thinks. A trade deficit simply means that one country spends more on goods from another country than that country spends on goods from them.

Crucially, economists say that having a trade deficit is not an inherently bad thing at all, because the U.S. simply can’t and shouldn’t make everything. Trump’s insistence that the U.S. is being taken for a ride betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of economics that is built on a dislike of other countries and a desire to be the dealmaker responsible for a new world order.

Trump warned that it would be the “worst” for China. In 2024, the United States had a $295.4 billion trade deficit with China. Trump said that China would need to “solve their surplus” before he would be willing to make a deal on tariffs.

https://newrepublic.com/post/193677/donald-trump-tariffs-deficit-understanding

Sorry Donny is a lot dumber than most consider….his tariffs prove it….

There’s a lot to say about these tariffs and how destructive they are, and most of it has been said. My colleague Timothy Noah wrote about the stupidity of tariffs as policy and how Trump has already cost him personally thousands of dollars. But I want to focus on something different here. I want to focus on Trump’s understanding of history. It’s so shockingly dumb—yes, even for him—that it’s hard to believe that we have a president of the United States who is this ignorant.

Here’s what Trump said the other day, and he has said versions of it a number of times: “In the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?”

OK. First of all. Nobody can tell what commission he’s talking about. President Chester Arthur empaneled a commission that recommended reducing tariffs by 20 to 25 percent, going hard against the conventional wisdom of the day. But Congress defied him, lowering tariffs by just an average of around 1.5 percent (and yes, that’s another thing—Congress is supposed to set tariffs, not the president, making this move, among other things, an impeachment-worthy “abuse of power,” a phrase invoked by The Wall Street Journal editorial board Thursday).

But more importantly, there’s this. Allow me to put this as Trump himself might on Truth Social: THE MAN IS AN IDIOT!!!

https://newrepublic.com/post/193614/donald-trump-tariffs-dumb-history-income-tax

This is why his policy is so appealing (for now) to the peasants that support him….they have very, very limited knowledge of how economics works…so they will fall for some bullshit story every time.

Donald Trump has once again proven himself to be the most economically ignorant president in US history.

His so-called “Liberation Day” is nothing more than a desperate con job designed to fool Americans into believing he is fighting for their prosperity while, in reality, he is setting the economy on fire. His tariffs, sold as a bold move to protect American jobs and industries, will do no such thing. Instead, they will send prices soaring across the country, driving up costs for consumers, businesses, and manufacturers alike.

Trump has made a career out of blaming others for his failures, and this time, he is pinning economic hardship on foreign nations while forcing American families to foot the bill for his disastrous policies. At the same time, thousands across the world may lose their jobs.

Let’s not forget that Trump promised to cut inflation on “day one” of his presidency. Yet, what has he actually done? He has unleashed an economic wrecking ball on global markets, sending shockwaves through the financial world and triggering a fresh wave of instability.

Instead of taming inflation, he is fuelling it at a reckless pace, proving once again that his economic strategy is nothing more than hot air wrapped in populist bravado. The impact is already being felt worldwide, with British pensions losing billions in value as a direct consequence of Trump’s actions.

(irishstar.com)

But the truth is glaringly obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of economics: tariffs are a tax on consumers. The burden doesn’t fall on China, Mexico, or Europe – it falls squarely on American workers, farmers, and families.

Prices on everyday goods will climb, businesses that rely on international supply chains will suffer, and the supposed economic “boom” Trump keeps bragging about will collapse under the weight of his own incompetence.

Trying to explain his tariffs Donny used Biden as an excuse….

“Our past ‘leaders’ are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our country,” the former host of The Apprentice declared. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump added: “This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its tariffs by 34 percent], on top of its long term ridiculously high tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate. They’ve made enough, for decades, taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA!”

Of course he would use Biden….that is a cowards way out.

Sorry people but this whole tariff thing is one big con….

…

“Instead of coming up with a real plan to get American workers a fair shake, he’s making the United States into an international joke and driving up prices for U.S. consumers,” he added. “If Republicans in Congress allow him to keep this up, Trump will keep yo-yoing on tariffs and using threats to pressure U.S. companies to stay in line instead of fighting back against this senseless economic war on American families.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of “disastrous unfettered free trade deals,” said in a lengthy statement that “targeted tariffs can be a powerful tool to stop corporations from outsourcing American jobs… But Trump’s chaotic across-the-board tariffs are not the way to do it.”

“What Trump is doing is unconstitutional. Trump has claimed supposed ’emergency’ powers to bypass Congress and impose unilateral tariffs on hundreds of countries… This is another step toward authoritarianism,” the senator asserted. “And let’s be clear about why Trump is doing all this: to give massive tax breaks to billionaires.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-pauses-tariffs

Side note:  China tariffs will now be 125%….that means that iPhone and Apple geeks will be paying through the nose for the product….will they still wait in long lines for the newest version?

People need to read this especially those ‘smart’ people that think Donny is on their side.

As proof that he is not on your side…..after his infamous rollback….

Donald Trump is openly bragging about just how much money his billionaire buddies made off of his dangerous tariff gambit.

After announcing a 90-day pause Wednesday on his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy on nearly every country—with the exception of China—Trump was excited to take credit for making a buck for his guests at the Oval Office.

“He made $2.5 million today, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad,” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and Roger Penske, a Nascar team owner, respectively.

Schwab’s estimated net worth is $12.6 billion, while Penske’s is $5.6 billion.

Bloomberg reported that Wednesday was the “best day ever” for billionaires, as the world’s wealthiest people raked in a heaping $304 billion as the markets shot back up.

The day’s biggest individual winner should come as no surprise: Elon Musk made a whopping $36 billion as Tesla stock soared up 23 percent. Trump’s surprising decision to temporarily back off his steep tariffs has sparked major concerns of obvious market manipulation, and even potential insider trading.

https://newrepublic.com/post/193860/donald-trump-brags-tariff-pause-made-billionaires-richer

How much did you make off his game?

Please look at all angles and stop letting petty biases get in the way.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Hurray For Our Side—A New Nuke

The whole nuke bomb thing has been more or less dormant for awhile and now, it began with the other admins so we cannot blame it all on Little Donny, there is a new nuke almost ready for deployment.

America’s modernization of its nuclear weapons is running ahead of schedule. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said the B61-13 nuclear bomb, a weapon 24 times more potent than the one dropped on Hiroshima, is entering full production seven months earlier than expected. Work on the weapon—a new type of B61 gravity bomb—started in 2023 under the Biden administration, and the DOD said at the time that “the fielding of the B61-13 is not in response to any specific current event.”

An NNSA spokesperson confirmed the accelerated timeline, saying it was enabled by “leveraging manufacturing processes from the related B61-12 program, whose final unit was completed in 2024.” Fox News reports the B61-13’s yield is akin to that of the 360-kiloton B61-7 (meaning it’s equivalent to 360,000 tons of TNT). Los Alamos reported last year that the new weapon would replace some B61-7s, meaning the overall count of America’s nuclear weapons would not increase. Interesting Engineering reports the US and Russia both possess about 5,000 nuclear warheads.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a 15-kiloton bomb, while the one dropped on Nagasaki was more powerful, at 25 kilotons. As for the specifics of this one, Interesting Engineering notes the “gravity bomb” aspect just means it would be dropped from a plane versus flying on its own propulsion, though its tail kit will allow it to direct itself to its target once released. The Aviationist adds that the tail kit will also enable it to penetrate “soft soil,” meaning it could hit underground targets. The bomb is a variable warhead, meaning it can be programmed to have a yield of between 10 and 360 kilotons. That allows it to be used in a wider range of scenarios by limiting collateral damage.

Now I ask….after many years of nukes on the back burner is this such a good idea?

Sounds to me like a new ‘rams race’ could be starting…..there is China and Russia that will not want to be outdone by thye US and we are off to the races (so to speak).

Do we really need a new nuke?  We have what the government calls sufficient deterrent to any possibility that the US could be under scrutiny for an attack….we have of stealthy, drones, advanced fighters (that are basically a flying brink) and a Navy that covers the world….so again do we really need a new nuke?

What say you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”