Senior Policy Analyst @Paragon_Inst. @AAF & Hill alum. WashU. Hoosier. Rugby player. 🇺🇸🦏 "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated." - Donald J. Trump
Washington, D.C.
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Evergreen reminder that the U.S. doesn't have a health care "system", b/c a system implies an intentional design. No one, left, right, or center, would ever intentionally design something as convoluted as what we have.
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
Moreover, assuming the risk/uncertainty of providing all-inclusive pricing has secured new buyers/business for our facility and other members of the Free Market Medical Association. Buyer/patient confidence is a natural result of fixed pricing. GKS
The vast majority of surgeries can be "commoditized." While a certain amount of uncertainty always exists, that is priced into the margin, which might be surrendered on any given case. Over time, this should even out or prices modified to accommodate. GKS
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
The obsession with ensuring that not only profit but a certain amount of profit should accompany every surgical procedure forms the basis of the analysis paralysis surrounding price formation. Sometimes margins are eroded and charity by those who miscalculated kicks in. GKS
Not for nothing, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma (@SurgeryCenterOK) doesn't seem to have any problems detailing the costs of procedures *before* they happen. It can be done!
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Oz had a whole event yesterday on price transparency & how they would be continuing to crack down on non-compliance by hospitals. The 2026 OPPS final rule was full of site-neutral policies, (& IPPS 2026 to a lesser extent). More to do, but CMS has done a lot on hospital reform.
Dr. Oz found 'waste' and it happens to be the independent doctor treating you in one visit. Not facility fees. Not hospitals ignoring price transparency. Not MA upcoding. The doctor. Savings: about 0.1% of Medicare. That tells you who has lobbyists and who doesn't.
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This is happening in American politics. One of many things that made America great is that we routinely rejected the politics of Europe. To continue our greatness, we must continue that rejection.
Europe is being torn apart between two movements: Islamo-Leftism, which has essentially become an Anti-Western grievance movement & mass migration facilitation vehicle, and Russian aligned right wing opportunists, usually staggeringly corrupt, who are prepared to sell their countrymen & fellow Europeans to Moscow.
Both hate half of their fellow countrymen, both are economically illiterate, both think they can control the hostile forces they are welcoming into Europe. Both have neither the willingness or ability to fix Europe's underlying problems.
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90% of the vast majority of the population's interactions w/ health care are extremely shoppable. Surgeries are not perfectly predictable nor do policymakers expect them to be; but the idea we can't even get an estimate (not what Dr. Bruggeman is saying) is crippling the system.
Except healthcare isn’t a grocery store
Will there be an unexpected complication? Those require more time, effort, procedures, and supplies.
Will you use implant X or implant Y? Each has its own price
Will there be more bleeding than usual and you require hemostatic agents?
Will something fall on the ground and we need another item?
Will the case take 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours?
There are countless determinations made in every surgery, including the ones that Dr. Oz performed when he was a surgeon. There isn’t one price for a surgery because not every surgery is the same, even when performed by the same surgeon on a similar patient.
I get the need for transparency. It’s just that this isn’t as easy as everyone would like it to be.
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A baseline estimate for an elective surgery should not be insanely difficult to produce, especially w/ common surgeries that have been performed *millions* of times. If things go wrong & it gets expensive quickly, that's the true purpose of insurance: covering what no one could.
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Not for nothing, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma (@SurgeryCenterOK) doesn't seem to have any problems detailing the costs of procedures *before* they happen. It can be done!
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
Social Security is a system that transfers my tax dollars to old people who then transfer that money to MGM Grand Riverside Casino
FIGURES: A West Virginia researcher crunching state betting numbers finds 43M bets placed by just ~16K bettors. And when does demand spike for slots? Every second, third and fourth Wednesday — Social Security payday. @MyBuckhannon mybuckhannon.com/high-roller…
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
Precisely! The Republican Party is trying to maintain power through strong anti-socialist rhetoric, but it has completely lost the plot when it comes to embracing the actual free market. In fact, J.D. Vance and others are attacking the free market at the same time they promise to save us from socialism.
"Republicans are also promising more government spending. We need to be an actual free market alternative with new solutions, not just see who can give away more money."
Part of my segment tonight on @IngrahamAngle @FoxNews
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
The nimbys won, decisively. The millennials were a huge generation and they blocked housing for most of the fertility years.
Forget the economy for a second, a lot of nimbys already are asking 'why no grandchildren'. Well your grandchildren went to propping up property values.
". . . half of the present birthrate decline is attributed to housing affordability, and . . . if costs had remained stable since 1990, 13 million more children would have been born through 2020."
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Three findings from our study in @JournalGIM:
1️⃣For-profit hospitals spent less on both labor and non-labor expenses than nonprofit and government hospitals.
2️⃣For-profit hospitals earned a sizable profit margin, while nonprofit hospitals operated with a thin margin and government hospitals incurred a small loss.
3️⃣Nonprofit hospitals, despite receiving generous tax-exempt benefits, in aggregate provided less charity care than government and for-profit hospitals.
Study link: link.springer.com/article/10…
Thank you, Adam Olson, Elizabeth Plummer, & @JohnXJiang1
@JHUCarey @JohnsHopkinsSPH @JohnsHopkins
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
The "China shock" narrative illustrates why the lack of debate is a problem in economics.
Autor et al. published a series of articles that have since been falsified by subsequent research. However, few realize this, which means the articles persist, like zombies. 1/8
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
This is a huge problem for aging countries, i.e. all of the West.
via @cowenconvos
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
the official left-wing position on Total Boomer Luxury Communism:
we must keep transferring more and more wealth each year to the idle, elderly rich, in order to perpetuate FDR, LBJ and Carter's deceptions
and if that causes generational injustice, just tax some of it back
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"For Medicaid recipients who do not report working, the most common activity after sleeping is watching television and playing video games. They spend 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, or 125 hours during a 30-day month."
aei.org/domestic-policy/oppo…
You pay taxes to cover welfare for people who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement.
If you’re young, healthy, and get government assistance, you should work, go to school, or volunteer.
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This is the danger of the Part D cliff in 2030. Biden & Dems created crisis point, which will then be used not to fix the damage from the IRA, but as an excuse to fold it in to traditional Medicare. The whole point is to hammer the wedge in further, until you get M4A.
Here's how we get Medicare for All done:
Make Medicare whole (no one can keep all the parts straight!)
Include vision, dental, and hearing.
Begin extending to more people, starting with children.
We arrive at Medicare for All, which means great Medicare for everyone.
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
People making this claim are ignorant or are lying to you. We have a dramatically different way of recording infant mortality compared to the rest of the world. That explains the gap.
Largest economy in the world, and it hates babies.
Community note
US infant mortality statistics are inflated relative to many countries by broader registration of extremely preterm/low birth weight live births. US rate was 5.52 per 1,000 live births in 2024.
bmj.com/content/344/bm…
healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collecti…
cdc.gov/nchs/products/…
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Jackson Hammond retweeted
hi i'm Graydon Gray IV, head of marketing at Gray Uniforms Inc.
Here's why I think your team could use some Gray Uniforms:
—gets away from your team's iconic colors
—looks bad
—easily confused with any other NFL team
—does not look good
—boring/forgettable
—looks like trash
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