Jon

@elonmusk This was 100% fraud and there is zero chance the founders were unaware.

Troubling

@wesbury You never did #12? Having to time the recording so you didn’t get the DJ on there? The worst was when you had a separate cassette player- then you had to manage the ambient noise too…

Number 12 is weird. Who did that? I did everything else on this list.

LeBron never did that

Dear @apple I would never write “abd” in a text. But rather than autocorrecting that to “and” you make jibberish out of my other words.

@BobStein_FT Great take

Why the Lesser Included Action Argument for IEEPA Tariffs Fails - marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

@theallinpod This is like Milli Vanilli critiquing the Beatles

Chamath explains Warren Buffett’s secret to success: “Markets thrive when there's information asymmetry” “Now I'm gonna get a lot of people really upset with me.” “This is an example of Warren Buffet's returns pre- and post-Reg FD. Now what do you see?” “His returns were double the market returns when this kind of information sharing was legal.” “And the minute that it became illegal and you had to act on the same edge as everybody else, his returns went to the market return. He generated zero alpha. In fact, he probably, on the margins, lost a little bit.” “So this is the single best investor in the world. This is what happens when you have information symmetry.” “So it's just meant to explain that markets thrive when there's asymmetry. Billions and billions of dollars will be made in asymmetry.” “The prediction markets today, unless they are regulated out of existence or shut down, will look like the stock market pre-Reg FD, and there's nothing we can do except choose not to bet it, because otherwise what you're going to have are a ton of sharps taking advantage of a ton of squares.”

@DOGE_HHS How about you tackle skin substitute and catheter fraud in Medicare?

Today the HHS DOGE team open sourced the largest Medicaid dataset in department history. This dataset contains aggregated, provider-level claims data for a specific billing code over time. For example, using this dataset, it would have been possible to easily detect the large-scale autism diagnosis fraud seen in Minnesota. Download the data yourself: opendata.hhs.gov

@wesbury Finally finished the book. Not Sorkin’s best.

We don’t need another book about 1929 which is designed to undermine capitalism and grow the government. That’s all it is. Keynesians love 1929 and 2008 because they can use them as a bludgeon even though it was government policy which caused both.

@ashishkjha @DrOz He’s doing the right things- building a really good foundation

People get mad at me for saying this but I think @DrOz has done a very good job overseeing CMS Not just because he's advocating for vaccines But because he's running a complex bureaucracy efficiently, promoting smart policy choices, etc. I am thankful for his leadership

@USConst_Amend_3 Prescient!

I'm about to become relevant again, aren't I?

How is that not targeting?

@Esoteric_Though @nicholashutfilz @robbiehendricks This is true.

@nicholashutfilz @robbiehendricks There's definitely a disconnect, I think it's the recruiting process and the bias of applicant evaluation systems.

Chatted with a higher up at Raytheon this morning at this mastermind. “We’re freaking out. We can’t find engineers. We’ve had a position open two years. Kids aren’t studying real majors anymore.” So reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged, where skill aged out w/no replacements in sight.

@wesbury And the missed facemask

@wesbury 100%

Candy city 2025

@ribzoftiktok Been doing this for years!

REAL MAN OF GENIUS

TIGERS WIN! @DePauwTigersFB tops Wis-Whitewater 26-23 in the 2nd round of the @NCAADIII Championship and advances to next Saturday's 3rd round! #TeamDePauw #d3fb

This is a story about how skin substitutes, materials used to improve healing of complex wounds, grew from a niche product in 2019 to scamming taxpayers and patients out of $10 bln/year, not because of a medical breakthrough, but from billing abuse. It’s a case study in how hard it is to cut even waste, fraud, and abuse. Medicare, run by CMS, reimburses bandages based upon the average sales price (ASP) at which the private sector is transacting. But in the first 6 months of product introduction, CMS doesn't have the data to compute ASP, so it pays whatever price the company sets. You can see the logic of the rule but probably also see the potential problem. Manufacturers figured out how to game the system. Introduce a new product at an inflated price, which Medicare will pay for the first 6 months. Then, phase it out and introduce an almost identical, but new, product. CMS now covers that product at whatever price the manufacturer set. Five years ago, the most expensive skin substitute was $1,000/sq in. Today it is $21,000/sq in. Why do medical providers support this scam instead of choosing a cheaper product? First, CMS pays providers a fee that includes a % of the bandage’s price, which rewards higher costs. Second, manufacturers offer steep “bulk” discounts on purchases as small as a few inches, and providers keep the difference. The higher the list price, the more they earn. This loophole has become a major revenue stream for dishonest manufacturers and providers. Mobile wound care clinics have popped up to generate demand from patients who never needed the product in the first place. Skin substitutes, unlike drugs, do not need successful randomized controlled trials to come to market. This creates two problems. First, manufacturers have negligible barriers to introduce substitute products every 6 months. And second, there is low quality of evidence on what type of wounds on which these products are effective, leading to overuse. In 2023, an Inspector General warned about the abuse, but fixing even blatant fraud takes time. CMS announced in 2024 a fix would happen in early 2025. In January, the Trump admin paused all Biden admin policies. Ultimately, the Trump admin finalized a rule reducing the price that will go into effect in 2026. Delays have cost taxpayers and patients billions. More concerning, the industry is making very large political donations in an attempt to delay or kill the changes. There’s a constant cat and mouse game between regulators who set healthcare reimbursement rules and companies looking to exploit them. The IG and CMS have done their job. Now they need political support to identify and stop this sort of fraud broadly. Congress must resist industry lobbying to undo the pricing change. Politicians say they’re furious about rising healthcare costs. The real test is whether they’ll address even blatant abuse to actually bring them down.

@ACapitalLP But math…

So the Hx thermostat application has been down for almost a week. No communication from @johnsoncontrols or @Kraftful so users are stuck checking Reddit threads to see if/when the app will come back up. Never seen anything like this before