bbase22 retweeted
Marc Andreessen reveals why housing, health care, and education keep getting more expensive while everything else gets cheaper
"There's basically three components to the American dream. A house near great job opportunities, great health care for you and your family, and sending your kids to good schools"
"If you disaggregate the economy over the last 25 years, everything that technology touches basically collapses in price. Television sets, computer games, anything with electronics in it. But if you chart housing, education, and health care, the prices of those things are skyrocketing"
"The government restricts supply, zoning laws and university certifications. And then the government responds to the political pressure caused by the rising prices by subsidizing demand. And of course, if you subsidize demand and a fixed supply, you get skyrocketing prices"
bbase22 retweeted
🚨🚨CRAZIEST STAT EVER🚨🚨
Legendary coaches Mike Ditka, Paul Brown, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh, Nick Saban, Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz, Bob Stoops, Les Miles, Ara Parseghian, Jim Tressel, Don James, Bill Cowher, Woody Hayes, Curt Cignetti, and Mike McCarthy were all born or raised within this 315-mile area.
18 football icons 🤯
bbase22 retweeted
I understand that the social security conversation is political poison. But I’m not running for office so I don’t care about that. Taking huge chunks out of the paychecks of young working Americans in order to pay for the retirements of older Americans who have a net worth several times higher, all to prop up a system that everyone knows likely won’t be there when those younger people are retirement age themselves, is morally abhorrent and economically insane. Everyone knows it, too, but we’re held hostage by elderly politicians who refuse to surrender power, and older voters who, as a group (with exceptions, obviously), simply don’t care all that much about the financial and cultural future their grandchildren will inherit.
bbase22 retweeted
A surgeon who saves me $4,000 is welcome to make $1,000.
I hope he does it again tomorrow.
Somewhere in the healthcare debate, we became more offended by someone earning money than by the amount patients lose.
Give me the total price, the expected outcome, and a credible alternative. Let me decide whether the offer works.
If a physician builds a better service, charges less, and earns a healthy profit, I want more people copying him.
His success gives the expensive hospital a problem.
That seems useful.
bbase22 retweeted
Removing third party payments for routine care will solve most of our healthcare cost problems.
Don’t believe me? Think it’s only around the margins?
Look at @nikillinit’s bill for childbirth. Nearly $80k paid by his insurance and another $4k out of pocket.
Now look at the billboard for this hospital advertising cash pay. They can do the entire thing for less than what @nikillinit’s out of pocket!
Using insurance is a 20x markup. We see this over and over again. 10-30x markups with third party payment. Compare @SurgeryCenterOK’s prices to insurance. Compare what @AtlasMD charges for imaging and meds to what your insurance pays. Look at the comparisons @noahkaufmanmd has directly on his website.
Moving to a cash pay system for routine care doesn’t just save a few percentage points off cost. We are talking 50-80% reductions. Massive savings before you even factor in what competition will do to further drive down costs and increase quality.
We are talking about saving hundreds of billions, easily.
So how much does it cost to have a baby in the US? The Europeans are really gonna shit themselves at this one.
(caveats - based in new york, good commercial coverage, etc.)
We were billed ~$150K, our insurance paid ~$79K, and our out-of-pocket costs were ~$4300. And this was for a largely uneventful birth cost wise - NICU babies can end up as multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars to occasionally $1M+!
Why are we sharing all of this? IMO healthcare wins because patients are afraid to share their experiences with each other. We gained a lot by having friends who would share their stories with us. This is our family's small part of trying to break that information asymmetry.
bbase22 retweeted
"As special an experience as I've ever had in my life."
@StanfordSteve82 recaps an unforgettable experience in Iowa City 🖤💛
bbase22 retweeted
It's so much worse than you all realize.
There's $1.8 Trillion in outstanding student loan debt. It just keeps going up.
It is completely irresponsible for the federal government to be subsidizing these loans. We're knowingly sending people to financial ruin.
Some examples:
bbase22 retweeted
The hospital credentialing process needs a complete overhaul. Creating one standardized process across the US would significantly reduce administration and decrease healthcare costs as a result. There is absolutely no reason, that in 2026, it takes a physician in good standing, 3-6months or more to get credentialed at a hospital…
bbase22 retweeted
I hope people realize that for the foreseeable future, the cost of healthcare benefits will get more people fired, or not hired, than AI
bbase22 retweeted
FBS oversight committee: Western Michigan beat Michigan. The refs were wrong. The result should be different. We saw it. You saw it. Everybody saw it.
But we’re not changing it because that would hurt Michigan and that’s not allowed.
The FBS Oversight Committee says in a statement that "instant replay protocols were not followed in the contest’s second-to-last play" in the Western Michigan-Michigan game, and "had the protocols been followed, the outcome of the game would have been different."
FBS oversight committee says it cannot overturn the result.
bbase22 retweeted
PETER THIEL CALLED IT.
The Antichrist wouldn’t build the doomsday machine.
This clip aged terrifyingly well.
Peter Thiel predicted in June, 26, 2025 exactly what is happening right now with Anthropic, Coxon and the AI-safety landscape.
“The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon non-stop, you talk about existential risk non-stop.”
The 'Antichrist' wouldn’t seize power by creating an AI apocalypse, but by CONVINCING everyone that the apocalypse was coming and then offering safety in exchange for CONTROL.
A must watch.
bbase22 retweeted
I give my students exercises in being more bored.
I assign them to work out without headphones and without devices. I tell them to get on a train, put their hands in their lap, turn off their iPhone, and look out the window.
There’s a reason you have some of your best ideas in the shower: your phone isn’t in there. Your mind has a chance to wander.
The problem is that we’ve become very good at distracting ourselves from that state.
You’re sitting at a red light and it’s going on too long, so you pull out your phone. You’re in a supermarket checkout line and it’s moving slowly, so you pull out your phone. Even picking up a book can become another way of filling the space.
At some point, all of that input starts distracting us from the hard work of thinking about ideas.
Don’t always distract yourself.
You need more white space in your life. You need a flight where you sit and think and pray and let your mind wander. You need moments when nothing else is coming in.
That kind of space is really important cognitively, especially if you want to understand the bigger questions and the meaning of your life.
bbase22 retweeted
I love college football, but the opening week games — without NFL competition — have to be way better. Imagine an SEC vs Big Ten challenge all opening weekend — games Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Monday. It would dominate. No brainer.
bbase22 retweeted
You miserable grifters. It was a landslide. There is zero evidence climate change played any role whatsoever. And Nepal could have used the billions USAID & the UN gave it to install cheap sensors and sirens but held “gender inclusion” workshops instead.
xitter.cf/shellenberger/status/2…
"The climate disasters in Nepal are the essence of climate injustice. Those least responsible for climate change are the worst affected and the least equipped to recover," writes Sumnima Udas, a member of Parliament in Nepal. time.com/article/2026/09/02/…
bbase22 retweeted
My testimony today at the Texas State capital
I’m the co-founder of CostPlusDrugs.com.
We started Cost Plus Drugs because the prescription drug market is too complicated, too opaque and too expensive.
Our model is simple: we show what we pay for a drug, add a transparent markup and pharmacy fee, and show the customer the price.
No games. No hidden spread.
And a large percentage of our customers already have insurance.
They come to us because our cash price is often lower than what their insurance plan asks them to pay.
That tells you something is wrong.
Here are five things Texas can do about it.
1. Let patients shop for cheaper drugs
If someone's insurance says a prescription costs $500, but they can buy the exact same drug for $100 cash, let them buy it for $100.
Then credit that $100 toward their deductible and out-of-pocket maximum wherever Texas has authority to do so.
Patients should be rewarded for saving themselves and their health plan money.
They shouldn't be punished for it.
That's how you create something healthcare desperately needs:
Price competition.
2. Standardize PBM and TPA contracts
Texas should require the state, cities, counties and school districts to use standardized model contracts and mandatory terms for PBMs and TPAs.
I've reviewed these contracts.
They routinely run hundreds of pages.
I've seen contracting packages longer than a thousand pages.
There is no human being—or group of human beings—on this planet who can stay awake and understand every provision in contracts that complicated.
I don't care how much coffee they drink.
I call it contractual terrorism.
The vendor only has to sneak a couple of tricks through hundreds of pages.
The employer has to find every one.
It can't.
I've developed a model PBM contract designed to eliminate the major tricks and hidden economics we've identified.
Texas can have it for free.
Use mine. Improve it. Open source it.
I don't care.
Just stop making every government entity negotiate these contracts from scratch.
3. Make the economics public
If taxpayers are paying the bill, taxpayers should know the price.
Pricing. Fees. Rebates. Guarantees. Pharmacy reimbursement. Affiliate compensation. Audit rights.
Make them public.
I'm not talking about patient information or legitimate security information.
I'm talking about the money.
You cannot have an efficient market without price discovery.
Without price discovery, you get information asymmetry.
And when one side knows dramatically more than the other, guess who wins?
Not taxpayers.
Not employers.
Not patients.
Open the contracts up and let competitors see what they have to beat.
That giant sucking sound you hear will be money moving away from healthcare conglomerates that are too big to care and back toward taxpayers, employers and patients.
In the immortal words of Charles Barkley:
I guarantee it.
4. Kill the gag clauses
PBM contracts are like Fight Club.
The number one rule of Fight Club is that you can't talk about Fight Club.
The number one rule of many PBM contracts seems to be that you can't talk about your PBM contract.
That's insane.
Let employers compare pricing, rebates, fees, guarantees and reimbursement terms.
Markets work better when buyers know what other buyers are paying.
5. Make enforcement hurt
If a healthcare company commits a serious violation, give them one mulligan.
But after a second material federal or Texas enforcement action within a defined period, make them ineligible for new Texas government contracts for a period of time.
Two strikes.
You're out.
Today, some of these companies can make billions, get caught, pay a fine and write it off more easily than I wrote off an NBA fine.
That's not deterrence.
That's a cost of doing business.
And Texas should spend more on enforcement.
If Texas spends $10 million auditing contracts and analyzing claims and prevents $100 million in unnecessary spending, that's not overhead.
That's a 10x return on investmen
bbase22 retweeted
Flossing is an awkward and time-consuming chore. Few of us do it even though we know we should. Dyson engineers and scientists have spent well over a decade understanding oral care regimes and how nasties build up in the mouth. Our research has shown that people consistently miss the areas where plaque forms: the gaps between teeth
We wanted to solve three fundamental problems: how to see those gaps, remove plaque, how to improve cleaning performance while brushing.
By combining a camera, machine learning, precision fluid dynamics, advanced brushing technologies, connectivity and WiFi, Dyson CameraJet™ introduces an entirely new way to keep your mouth healthy.”
— James Dyson, Founder and Chief Engineer
dyson.co.uk/discover/news/la…
Dyson trained an AI on 470,000 dental images and put it inside a toothbrush. With a camera. That flosses for you. In real time.
It's called the CameraJet for $499. Launched today.
A 100,000-pixel macro lens sits inside the brush head. It takes 28 images per second while you brush. The AI detects gaps between your teeth and within 100 milliseconds fires a precision jet of mouthrinse directly into the gap.
It's computer vision doing your flossing. While you brush. Automatically.
Only Dyson would look at a toothbrush and think it needs a camera, a machine learning model, and a jet engine.
bbase22 retweeted
Zohran Mamdani has been mayor for 231 days and this, if manifested, and without hyperbole, will be the most radical act of his tenure by a long shot.
Please allow me to break this down:
He is about to spend 70 million tax dollars on 5 government run grocery stores (notwithstanding Aldi' making clear they could open 5 stores for a fraction of that).
Those five stores, run as they will be on tax dollars every single month no matter how full or empty their aisles will be, will be able to operate at a loss in perpetuity, and offer groceries for 30% less than their competitors.
But because no private grocer could possibly compete with a government competitor undercutting them by 30%, they will all inevitably all go bankrupt.
Mamdani's solution to prevent their bankruptcy? Give those private grocers tax dollars for them to compete and thereby make up for the 30% shortfall that...HE CREATED.
Succinctly: the government spends tax dollars to create an insanely bad problem. Then, to solve the problem that THEY CREATED, the government spends more tax dollars.
Utterly insane.
