> That one-quarter of Medicare spending in the United States occurs in the last year of life is commonly interpreted as waste. This is the issue this paragraph

> That one-quarter of Medicare spending in the United States occurs in the last year of life is commonly interpreted as waste. This is the issue this paragraph is dedicated to refuting. But this thread is not about this issue. So it’s largely just an irrelevant passage. However; > Here we analyze how spending is distributed by predicted mortality, based on a machine-learning model of annual mortality risk built using Medicare claims. Death is highly unpredictable. Less than 5% of spending is accounted for by individuals with predicted mortality above 50%. This quote is dumb. As a data scientist I give it an F. Less than 5% of spending is accounted for by individuals with predicted mortality above 50%? Ok but what proportion of individuals is that? Is it 10% in which case they’re underrepresented? 5% in which case they’re average? Or .1% in which case they’re pulling in 50x their share? If we pull the criteria down to 40% what happens? What share of people who died are above 50% in the model? It’s a quote that is basically impossible to make use of on its face but is being used to push a very specific narrative.