yold__

GLP-1 drugs may be a game-changer for obesity and diabetes, the same way that cholesterol (statin) drugs have greatly improved heart health. Hopefully reversing a long trend of increasing waistbands in developed / developing countries. Unfortunately, America will pay the highest price (including Medicare). I'm all for anything that makes them cheaper, including the many compounding pharmacies currently exploiting the loophole the author takes issue with.

Tort reform in Florida is a bandaid. The state-run insurer is creating serious market distortions by undercharging for the risk, accumulating very large proportions of the state homeowners insurance policies (since no one else will), and then offloading the policies to undercapitalized insurers while looking the other way about their poor financial condition. When Citizen's claims are in excess of its reserves, the legislature steps in and taxes the rest of the state to cover the shortfall. I'm guessing when the other insurers become insolvent, the shortfall is offload to the state guarantee fund (possibly on the taxpayers dime). This is all covered in the paper.

I really don't want to keep googling things for you. The police are not judicial officers. Yes, I've read the article.

The police are breaking federal law and the article is wrong. This is not a gray area.

Solving this communication problem is uncomfortable. Connecting software developers with end-users is hard. It means software developers have to have courage to ask "dumb questions" when the end-users explains something too quickly in jargon-laden terms. It means that end-users have to be patient, with the time to teach and explain enough about the problem domain. People with strong communication *and* technical skills are hard to find, and creating ongoing mutual respect and cooperation between end-users and the oft-hated IT department is only possible when employee attrition is low enough to create long-standing relationships.

Software development is fun when it is a high-momentum, self-contained exercise. So we direct our energy to complexity, because its fun and safe. We don't need to stop and engage with end-users who speak a language we barely understand. We don't need to create consensus among disagreeing end-users representatives. We just need put on some good music, drink some coffee, and solve clean technical problems, rather than messy people problems. I'd guess most software developers would say "you don't pay me enough to deal with people", and walk away.

It's often even less in my experience. Despite having a "unicorn" skillset (soft-skills, advanced degree, domain experience, and SWE experience), I make about as much as a vanilla SWE. There are a huge number of inexperienced PhDs that want into the field, and we are flooded with resumes every time a DS leaves. Also, most of the time, models don't really matter. What makes or breaks most DS projects is soft-skills, stakeholder management, and data cleaning / feature engineering.

They already do, and it's a huge amount of money. It's how they keep prices opaque. There is a list price (retail price), the pharmacy dispenses the drug, and gets reimbursed a variable amount from the insurance company (called the reimbursement price), usually about 50% of the list price. Then, the insurance company gets a kick-back from the drug manufacturer (usually for non-generic drugs). Medicare also gets these kick-backs, and they stopped disclosing the actual amount around 2016.

This is utterly wrong. First of all, Medicare Part D covers pharmacy benefits. Part D is supplemental insurance purchased by seniors from a private insurance company. If you are too poor, I think you go on Medicaid. Also, Medicare Part D plans DO pay less than commercial plans.

This study is probably complete B.S. because no one knows how much is paid in drug rebates. Manufacturers pay the insurance companies (including Medicare) huge amounts of money (back) for prescription drug utilization coming from their members. In short, it's a legal kick-back. And I'm not kidding, it's a huge amount of money (like 20% - 30% of the reimbursement price)

U.S. drug pricing is broken for many reasons, and sorry to call you out, but nothing that you said is true. Everybody gets ripped off by big pharma, not just the government.

If the duration of treasuries, or whatever you are basing the spread on, is equal to MBSs, the spread would be constant. This is not the case because of prepayments (i.e. the option).

When interest rates rise, refinancing-related prepayments slow. Duration increases. But, it's a hot housing market, so there is an offsetting effect. Duration is decreasing due to the housing market (buyer-driven prepayment).

The option-adjusted spread would capture both these effects, but good luck with that.

Jeremy Grantham has a megaphone right now. Every single news site keeps repeating this. They also ignore the fact that the guy is a perpetual doomsayer.

Lemonade reinsurers the vast majority of the risk. Their historical profitability will determine what reinsurers charge them (which is a premium). Basically all of their risk (75%) is reinsured.

If/when reinsurers tire of thin margins and high volatility, they'll hit Lemonade with a rate increase. Lemonade can either retain more of the risk, or pay the reinsurance premiums. The additional capital required to do that will either come from policyholders or shareholders.

Assuming a $1500 / month payment at 1999 interest rates (8%) gets you 200K in principal. Assuming a 4% (even though it more like 3%) gets you 315K today in principal. Same payment, but instead of paying interest to the bank, you pay more into equity.

As an aside, inflation rates were quite similar in 1999 as they are today. So I think the interest rates are a fair comparison (i.e. Fisher hypothesis).

Rising interest rates might have a similar effect in the housing market as with the bond market (bonds issued at lower interest rates trade at a discount), but my suspicion is that house prices are more "sticky" than bonds.