The good news: Medicare expenditures are going down! The bad news: It’s because of older people needlessly dying of Covid.

Paul Krugman, columnist in the New York Times, is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and writes great articles on economics. But he understands that a lot of what happens in the economic realm is really just a reflection of what’s happening in the political realm. His most recent column starts with these three paragraphs:

Last Friday the Medicare trustees released their latest report on the system’s finances, and it contained some unexpected good news: Expenditures are running below projections, and the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund won’t be exhausted as soon as previously predicted.

But one important reason for this financial improvement was grisly: Covid killed a substantial number of Medicare beneficiaries. And the victims were disproportionately seniors already suffering from severe — and expensive — health problems. “As a result, the surviving population had spending that was lower than average.”

Now, Covid killed a lot of people around the world, so wasn’t this just an act of God? Not exactly. You see, America experienced a bigger decline in life expectancy when Covid struck than any other wealthy country. Furthermore, while life expectancy recovered in many countries in 2021, here it continued to fall.

Of course, Krugman is certainly not celebrating the fact that Medicare is more fiscally sound than previously thought (I always love alarmist projections – which he’s not providing here of course – about Medicare or Social Security “running out of money”. There are all sorts of ways to fund both of them, as long as you don’t mind raising taxes or cutting benefits for wealthier Americans. For some reason, there always seems to be plenty of money to fund further tax cuts, but there’s great wailing and gnashing of teeth when it comes to figuring out how to keep current benefit levels in lifesaving government programs. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to solve both problems).

Krugman compares the US with Italy, which “…has experienced a generation of economic stagnation, with basically no growth in real G.D.P. per capita since 2000, compared with a 29 percent rise here. Yet Italians can expect to live about five years longer than Americans, a gap that has widened even as the Italian economy flounders.” Hmm…would you live in a “floundering” economy if it would add five years to your life? We should all have such “floundering”!

Krugman points out that the source of this gap is probably political. Why does he say this? Because of the big geographical disparities in life expectancy: “Geographic health disparities have surged in recent decades. According to the U.S. mortality database, as recently as 1990, Ohio had slightly higher life expectancy than New York. Since then, New York’s life expectancy has risen rapidly, nearly converging with that of other rich countries, while Ohio’s has hardly risen at all and is now four years less than New York’s.”

Why this geographic disparity? Krugman sees two primary reasons.

(The first is) the fact that some of the poorest states in America, with the lowest life expectancy, are still refusing to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would cover the bulk of the cost (and the failure to expand Medicaid is killing many hospitals). This suggests that they’re failing to improve health because they don’t want to, not because they can’t afford to.

(The second is) since Covid struck, residents of Republican-leaning counties have been far less likely to get vaccinated and far more likely to die of it than residents of Democratic-leaning counties — even though vaccines are free.

And there you have it: Two completely illogical policies that are literally killing the residents of these areas. And for what noble purpose are these people sacrificing their lives? Perhaps they’re making a statement about “wokeness”. We heard it, loud and clear!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, April 2.

Month	Deaths reported during month/year	Avg. deaths per day during month/year	Deaths as percentage of previous month/year
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April 2020	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May 2020	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June 2020	23,925	798	57%
Month of July 2020	26,649	860	111%
Month of August 2020	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept. 2020	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct. 2020	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov. 2020	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec. 2020	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb. 2021	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March 2021	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April 2021	24,323	811	64%
Month of May 2021	19,843	661	82%
Month of June 2021	10,544	351	53%
Month of July 2021	8,833	287	84%
Month of August 2021	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept. 2021	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct. 2021	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov. 2021	38,364	1,279	77%
Month of Dec. 2021	41,452	1,337	108%
Total 2021	492,756	1,350	158%
Month of Jan. 2022	65,855	2,124	159%
Month of Feb. 2022	63,451	2,266	96%
Month of March 2022	31,427	1,014	50%
Month of April 2022	13,297	443	42%
Month of May 2022	11,474	370	86%
Month of June 2022	11,109	370	97%
Month of July 2022	11,903	384	107%
Month of August 2022	16,199	540	136%
Month of September 2022	13,074	436	81%
Month of October 2022	12,399	400	95%
Month of November 2022	9,221	307	74%
Month of December 2022	11,978	386	130%
Total 2022	271,387	744	-45%
Month of January 2023	17,768	573	148%
Month of February 2023	11,247	402	63%
Month of March 2023	7,885	263	70%
Total Pandemic so far	1,155,323	1,045

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,155,323

Average daily deaths last seven days: 203

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 322

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.1%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 106,249,748          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 135,499 (19,357/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 142,211 (20,316/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.1% (0.1% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.