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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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1 Nov, 4 tweets, 2 min read
The Biden administration pushed to allow the sale of over the counter hearing aids. The Medicare hearing expansion would ban Medicare from paying for over the counter hearing aids. 🤔mattstoller.substack.com/p/hearing-aid-…
This kind of pro-monopoly bullshit is why I'm tired of progressive politics. 'We need to expand coverage of hearing in Medicare' sounds awesome but then you realize it's about helping monopoly providers of overpriced hearing aids by excluding competitors. mattstoller.substack.com/p/hearing-aid-…
It's quite possible to fix the legislation so that the hearing aid cartel can't effectively undo what the Biden executive order just did re: hearing aids. mattstoller.substack.com/p/hearing-aid-…
One counterpoint - medicare only covers severe hearing loss and the FDA already bans the use of OTC hearing aids for severe hearing loss. Still I don't think this makes sense. Why ban Medicare from buying cheaper stuff if a health care professional says that's what you need?

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
3 Nov
Liberals don't get it. The Pandemic and Covid are different things. Covid is a disease. The Pandemic is a politically constructed determination. We are not in a 'flu pandemic' because we have decided politically that the flu is something we have to deal with in a normal society.
Covid makes you sick. The Pandemic is a rationale for making lots of public policy decisions about who can travel, work, get educated, sell medicine, and so forth. Covid can decline as The Pandemic continues, and vice versa.
Biden has not handled the Pandemic well because he has empowered media hungry bureaucrats like Fauci to make *political choices* when the country has decided it prefers normalcy to endless panic and control.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
I have views on what Democrats are doing wrong politically, but the basic issue is that we are out of touch. I've never seen such wildly pro-labor sentiment in America in in my lifetime, but the Democratic governing class has no connection to the working class.
When Democrats admire a working class icon as much as they admire Anthony Fauci, they will no longer be out of touch. Screw that. When Democrats can *name* a working class icon...
Structurally the Democrats rely for their political machinery on nonprofits, and that's mostly untethered from any feedback loop except what foundation and corporate executives think. I don't really know how to fix any of this.
Read 10 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
A lot of the opposition to stronger antitrust enforcement is based on the idiotic notion that most business leaders know what they are doing when they try to monopolize a new area.
It's like let's say that antitrust enforcers had won the case against the AT&T-Time Warner merger. What would have happened is that DOJ would have saved AT&T shareholders and Time Warner employees from an immensely stupid deal.
If we had enforced predatory pricing law Softbank would not have been able to waste billions of dollars of Saudi money on WeWork. I'm not saying that's the point of the law, but the idea that too much enforcement is inefficient is likely the opposite of the truth.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
When Simon & Schuster announced that it was up for sale in March 2020, its CEO wrote to one of its best- selling authors: “I’m pretty sure that the Department of Justice wouldn’t allow Penguin Random House to buy us, but that’s assuming we still have a Department of Justice.” 🤣
Spicy complaint form DOJ against Penguin/Random House buying Simon and Schuster. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
It is interesting that this DOJ challenge is going after a merger that would reduce the market from 5 to 4 competitors.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
29 Oct
1. For at least five years, Facebook has been mired in significant public scandal. But Mark Zuckerberg simply doesn't care. Why? The answer is, he knows it doesn't matter, because the rule of law doesn't apply to the powerful. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
2. Zuckerberg has heard intense criticism since he started Facebook at Harvard. And while criticism would seem shameful to a normal person, to him, the scandals, far from a problem, are why he won. He is worth $100 billion bc he grabbed whatever he could, and others didn't.
3. The legal problems, the settlements for deception with the Federal Trade Commission, the $5B fine for violating it, foreign investigations, and the antitrust suit... to him it's noise. He's a builder, and builders build. mattstoller.substack.com/p/enough-is-en…
Read 22 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
28 Oct
This bill isn't anything close to a New Deal agenda in any way shape or form. Tossing around "New Deal" doesn't make it so.
FDR's goal during the New Deal was to break the power of oligarchs. He did it while governor of New York, he ran on it in 1932, and he implemented it when in office. That's not Biden or the Democrats or the progressives' goal. Social spending wasn't the New Deal.
Here's a comparison of FDR's infrastructure spending and whatever these plans are. They don't match up in their political goals. mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-monopol…
Read 6 tweets

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