Tag: health

  • BrokeCon By Design: The Complete 25-Part Series

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    A 25-part series on how American life got rigged against the bottom 90% — system by system, with receipts.

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    Even that’s Odd

  • Why Have I Started to Smell Like A Frito Corn Chip?

    I’ve been noticing something for the past few weeks. I smell like Fritos. Not after eating Fritos. Not near Fritos. Just as a default condition of existing. I’ll be sitting somewhere, not doing anything corn-adjacent, and I’ll get this whiff and do that thing where you look around the room trying to find the source…

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  • My GMO Concern Confusion (Until I Finally Looked It Up)

    For years, I walked past products screaming NON-GMO! and thought… so what? I’ll be upfront: I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m also an optimist — or maybe a pessimistic optimist? An optimistic pessimist? I’ve never quite nailed that down, and honestly, that tracks with the fact that I spent years vaguely confused…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 14: What We Could Have Instead

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    Part 14 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. The previous thirteen installments have been an attempt to describe the structure of cost-shifting in American economic life and to trace how that structure was built. This one looks at what other developed countries do, partly because the…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 9: Death, Taxes, and Everything In Between

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    Part 9 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. This installment is about all the other fees: the ones below the line on the bills I have already written about, the surcharges and convenience charges and service fees and resort fees and processing fees that have become…

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  • Passing the Buck: Why We Pay More But Make Less Part 8: Insurance

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    Part 8 of Passing the Buck, a 15-part series on why we make less but pay more. On the morning of December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan on his way to his company’s annual investor day. The bullet casings recovered at the…

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  • Divided We Fall Part 2: What Happens After the Laws Change

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    I’ll be honest about where I’m coming from on this one. I thought about abortion the way a lot of people think about it — abstractly — until I didn’t. I had pregnancy scares as a young person, the kind that focus your attention in a hurry. Later I watched my wife actually carry our…

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  • BrokeCon by Design Part 6B: How Universal Healthcare Would Save American Business (And Why Some Fight It Anyway)

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    Part 6A laid out the three honest paths to fixing this — Medicare for All, a public option, or a Swiss-style regulated multi-payer — and closed by pointing out who else is paying for the current setup besides you and your family: American business. This is that post. For about twenty-five years I worked at…

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  • BrokeCon by Design Part 6A: Healthcare Solutions That Actually Work (And Why We’re Told They Won’t)

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    This is Part 6A in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: The Healthcare Trap | Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom Part…

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  • BrokeCon by Design Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom

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    This is Part 5 in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get Imagine your…

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  • BrokeCon by Design Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get (And Why That Matters)

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    This is Part 4 of BrokeCon by Design. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money Back in Part 3 we ran the receipts: Americans pay around $13,500 per person for healthcare and rank 36th in the world on life expectancy. First…

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  • BrokeCon by Design Part 1: USA! USA! USA!

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    The first time I really clocked the USA chant in the wild was at a NASCAR race. Flags everywhere — not just flying, but as bandanas, t-shirts, full Stars-and-Stripes jeans, patches sewn onto things that did not previously have patches. (Aside: the U.S. Flag Code technically prohibits using the flag as clothing, bedding, or drapery.…

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