bhupy

63 ms·

511.
by bhupy 6y ago
> For myself I can't help but wonder if lump-sum licensing might not be more effective. Pharmaceuticals are a bit like software: very high R&D cost, but the marginal cost to manufacture is very small. A one-time payment to sink
512.
by bhupy 6y ago
Yep, for full disclosure, I work in healthcare pricing and payments and adjust claims myself. While discount programs focus on the uninsured, this is the first time I’m seeing the discount being framed in such a way that it effectively ince
513.
by bhupy 6y ago
> stepping in if the private sector won’t due to it not being profitable enough That’s effectively what government-enforced drug patents are for. I think it’s debatable whether that’s the best implementation of what you’re describing. Go
514.
by bhupy 6y ago
This is very similar (and really interesting) though I’m not sure if Walmart has a special condition on use of insurance. Amazon appears to be incentivizing customers to not use insurance to pay for their drugs. I’m not sure if Walmart does
515.
by bhupy 6y ago
In other countries, government “negotiation” is just a euphemism for price controls. An example of this is Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, which regulates drug prices. This isn’t “negotiation”, this is just centralized polic
516.
by bhupy 6y ago
> Amazon claims Prime members will be able to save “up to 80 percent off generic and 40 percent off brand name medications when paying without insurance. This was buried in the article, but is IMO a bigger deal. In the long run, this cou
517.
by bhupy 6y ago
That’s not true, because appreciation isn’t uniform in a housing market. Not everyone experienced the same value gain, so your tax bill might be hundreds of thousands of dollars while your neighbor’s tax bill might just be thousands of doll
518.
by bhupy 6y ago
Why is it that traditional capital gains tax doesn’t function as a transaction tax on equities and securities?
519.
by bhupy 6y ago
Yup, that too. It’s another consideration that I don’t think ought to be made for land appreciation. In fact, because it doesn’t account for inflation, for the longest holders of land, a high LAT functions like a very mild LVT in practice,
520.
by bhupy 6y ago
I think it's fair that comparing something to China doesn't win adherents, but just because China does it, doesn't mean that it's "communist". China has shopping malls — does that make shopping malls communist?
521.
by bhupy 6y ago
Not quite relevant, because we already tax land appreciation in the US today, it's just the capital gains tax. The capital gains tax is also low because (in theory) we want to incentivize investment in the name of growth. There's
522.
by bhupy 6y ago
I would argue that as a transaction tax, it reduces the demand for the land. The net effect is the same: curbing land speculation.
523.
by bhupy 6y ago
A pet crusade of mine: California can pass a 100% (or close to that) land appreciation tax (capital gains tax on land), and that wouldn't violate Prop 13. High land appreciation taxes are essentially indistinguishable from Georgist L
524.
by bhupy 6y ago
> but the Electoral College was definitely invented to appease the South No it wasn’t. Under both the Northern proposed New Jersey Plan as well as the Southern proposed Virginia Plan, the President would have actually been elected by Con
525.
by bhupy 6y ago
> I thought the difference between Medicare advantage type plans is that it is an HMO type of deal where you can't pick your own specialized treatment centers and have to jump through a lot of hoops for complex medical issues and dr
526.
by bhupy 6y ago
Untrue, the South was more populous than the North during the ratification of the Constitution -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... In fact, it was the slave owning southern states that
527.
by bhupy 6y ago
> It's mostly paid out by Uber actually - Uber would start paying for healthcare, payroll tax, unemployment insurance, social security etc. Just like, you know, your average Facebook job except without the 401K matching, stock benef
528.
by bhupy 6y ago
It's not. When you turn 65, you have the option to enroll either in "Original Medicare", which is what we usually think of when we talk about "single payer healthcare in America", or you can enroll in Medicare Advan
529.
by bhupy 6y ago
Which is fine, because that's progressively taxed. The alternative is higher prices which flatly burden everyone equally.
530.
by bhupy 6y ago
> Having medicare for all and a social safety net is standard in all European countries and other Global North countries. No disagreements that having a robust social safety net is a necessity, but just want to nit-pick a little here and
531.
by bhupy 6y ago
> These are jobs, not hobbies, and people need to eat. How about neither? They're overwhelmingly part-time side work. This was pretty clear in the polls.
532.
by bhupy 6y ago
I found the 538 tool to be a fantastic way to get the intuition for Bayesian probabilities. Wish I had this intuition in college.
533.
by bhupy 6y ago
Yep, I don't disagree.
534.
by bhupy 6y ago
I'm also not convinced that wealth taxes in the US are constitutional, since wealth isn't income (unlike salaries, dividends, and capital gains), and the Federal government is explicitly prohibited from direct taxation with the ex
535.
by bhupy 6y ago
I generally agree with the opposition to wealth taxes (and no, I'm not wealthy), but I'll try to engage with this by providing what I believe is the strongest good-faith counterargument: > a wealth tax creates a perverse incent
536.
by bhupy 6y ago
> Yes, some sub indices have gone up, others have gone down. That doesn't change the fact that _overall_ the CPI has gone up over time. Wages have been having an inverse relationship with prices overall. This is not a case of "
537.
by bhupy 6y ago
> we'd see the consumer price index dropping. That's not what's happened. Not for all goods & services. The consumer price index has been falling for most goods & services with the notable exception of healthcare,
538.
by bhupy 6y ago
> In a society with a social safety net, under-paid workers are also a cost to government as they will not pay taxes and will be due social assistance payments/transfers to help cover their costs for food and shelter. Social safety
539.
by bhupy 6y ago
> But why aren't they paying a living wage in the first place, a wage that they were paying in the past if not for inflation? Because the market rate for labor doesn't always work out to equal a "living wage". Markets
540.
by bhupy 6y ago
> Also, why are we assuming that technology brought down wages when offshoring has skyrocketed. What makes you think it wasn't competition from the third world labor rather than robots? Do we think that increasing minimum wage will

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