Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 Profile picture
Dec 11, 2024 9 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Luigi Mangione's manifesto includes a superficially damning claim.

However, it's wrong.

Want to understand why the US spends so much on healthcare to get such poor results?

Read this thread to see the greatest (and most unknown) analysis of US healthcare ever done. Image
1) Healthcare spending in all countries tracks income.

The richer a country is, the more they spend on health care.

The US is the richest country in the world, and it spends the most on healthcare.

(It's important to use real income for this analysis, not GDP) Image
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2) The US spends more on healthcare because it consumes more.

The richer a country is, the more healthcare it consumes.

Given more money, people simply consume more healthcare. Image
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3) The evidence that US healthcare is uniquely expensive is weak.

All goods cost more in richer countries. In richer countries, human time is more valuable.

Does healthcare in the US cost more? Yes, but not in any way that wouldn't be predicted by its wealth. Image
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4) All wealthy countries have more of their economy consumed by healthcare.

The richer a country is, the higher a percentage of that country is employed in healthcare, and the more they are paid.

Again: nothing unique about the US! The US is just rich. Image
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5) Profit margins and compensation in healthcare aren't high.

Healthcare in the US is not especially profitable compared to other sectors.

Nor is there anything out-of-line with how US providers are compensated (again, relative to US wealth). Image
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6) Money has diminishing returns on its ability to extend life.

Norway and Luxembourg spend twice as much as Spain and Italy to no result. Image
7) The US is uniquely drug-addicted, violent, and fat.

The US has shorter life expectancy due to the behavioral choices of its residents.

Money alone can't solve obesity or a gunshot. Image
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All of the above graphs and data come from @rcafdm, an anonymous economics blogger who is absolutely brilliant.

His blog is somewhat dead, and he's not that active on X.

Maybe current events and DOGE could encourage him to return.

randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-convention…

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More from @jeremykauffman

Apr 4
12 years ago, almost to the day, conservative journalist and programmer John Derbyshire was canceled and lost his job at the National Review.

Why? He wrote an article, called "The Talk: Nonblack Version"

Derbyshire shared 15 suggestions. How do they hold up today? Let's look Image
1 - Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.
2 - American blacks are descended from West African populations, with some white and aboriginal-American admixture. The overall average of non-African admixture is 20-25 percent. The admixture distribution is nonlinear, though: “It seems that around 10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry.”
Read 19 tweets
Jan 2
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are really weird.

People from this region have values, attitudes, perspectives, and achievements unique compared to anywhere else on earth.

We should ask what will happen if/when societies are no longer run by them. Let's take a look... Image
Protestant Europeans are the most high-openness and individualistic of any people. Image
The left map of "clientelism": how much favor-exchanging is required for government work (all white = no data)

The right is a map of government corruption (as perceived by citizens).

It's WASPs + Japan. That's it. Image
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Read 11 tweets
Dec 12, 2024
Want a fact about healthcare that will really blow your mind?

Healthcare has almost no effect on health outcomes.

Is the US really spending trillions of dollars each year on nothing? Let's look at the evidence.
In 1974, the RAND Corporation ran the then largest randomized control trial on healthcare.

They recruited 2,750 families, totaling 7,700 people under the age of 65. Families were randomly assigned to one of five types of health insurance plans:

- Three cost-sharing plans: 25 percent, 50 percent, or 95 percent coinsurance, subject to a co-pay limit (~$5000 today)
- Unlimited fee-for-service care (the same plan as above, but with a 0% co-pay)
- Free care from a nonprofit HMO
The RAND Health Insurance Experiment followed these families for 8 years.

It found:

- Cost-sharing reduces healthcare utilization by 25-30%, with no effect on health outcomes for almost everyone.
- Poor people in the top 80% of initial health ended up with a 3% lower general health index under free medicine than under full-priced medicine.
- Low-income participants with chronic conditions did have a small measurable increase in hypertension, but this was the only one of thirty measures that was significant.
- No meaningful differences in rates of death.

Full study: rand.org/content/dam/ra…
Read 10 tweets
Nov 6, 2024
New Hampshire will have an entirely Republican state government.

A record number of these Republicans will be right-wing libertarians.

Here are the top 6 things they should do 🧵 Image
Priority 1: Expand School Choice, Shrink Gov't Schools

Government schools are the single strongest progressive force in the state.

Every dollar that moves out of their control and into the free market is a win.

This battle won't end in 2 years, but the ball must be advanced.Image
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Priority 2: Fix Domicile Laws (End College Student Problem)

Every election, 10,000+ out-of-state students vote in NH elections.

Strengthen our domicile laws to make it as hard as possible for temporary residents to vote.

This will increase Republican wins in future elections.Image
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Read 7 tweets
Jul 18, 2024
I actively cataloged some of the worst behavior during 2020's cultural revolution.

Here's a round-up of 20 egregious firings, investigations, and excesses from 2020, so you can remember just how bad things got. Image
1 - Gordon Klein

Klein, a UCLA professor, was suspended from his job for politely asking why it made sense to give black students special treatments on exams.

Klein lost his ability to teach for this incredibly timid letter. Image
2 - Stu Peters

BBC radio host Peters lost his job for question white privilege and saying that "all lives matter" Image
Read 21 tweets
Nov 30, 2023
Fed up with Disney and other media companies opposing free speech?

You can stop paying them but still watch their content.

Here's how: 🧵
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Step 1:

Sign up for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) that is torrenting friendly. ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and ProtonVPN are all solid.

The VPN will hide your torrenting from your ISP. A VPN can sound intimidating, but it's easy to setup, just follow instructions from your provider.

Image
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Step 2:

Install a BitTorrent client.

Transmission is a nice lightweight client. Deluge is solid too, heavier but with more features.

The Brave browser also has torrenting features built in.

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Read 6 tweets

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