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United States of America
Joined February 2023
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The Boyd Institute retweeted
$43,117.32 for healthcare coverage for family of four healthy people. If you think that healthcare coverage in the USA is a ok - then you are not paying attention. The healthcare exchange and its providers are so out of touch. In 2026 my healthcare coverage for a very healthy family of four was crazy high. In 2027, the provider is increasing this coverage by 31% year over year. That’s $849.29 more per year above an already insane annual amount. Not signing up for this crap any longer. Our representatives are so out of touch with reality. We need a program based on some common sense. These insurance providers need to be reigned in.
#healthcare #USA #outoftouch #broken #changesneeded
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Bring back catastrophic insurance for people over 30
The Boyd Institute retweeted
What would Medicare for All look like if it were funded through a payroll tax?
CBO’s broadest illustrative coverage scenario requires approximately $3 trillion in additional annual federal funding in 2030, including dental, vision, hearing, and expanded long term care.
On an assumed $14 trillion payroll base, funding that gap would require approximately 21.4% in additional combined employer and employee payroll taxes, while existing federal health funding continues.
Split equally, with no cap on taxable wages, that means 10.7% from you and 10.7% from your employer:
• $50,000 salary: $5,350 more annually from each.
• $100,000 salary: $10,700 more from each.
• $150,000 salary: $16,050 more from each.
• $250,000 salary: $26,750 more from each.
• $500,000 salary: $53,500 more from each—$107,000 combined annually!
Everyone with taxable wages contributes, while coverage extends to children, retirees, and people who aren’t working.
Covered insurance premiums would disappear. Some workers and employers would save overall. Others would pay more. Employer contributions also affect the cost of employing someone and can influence wages and hiring.
This is an illustrative calculation using CBO’s spending estimate, not a CBO-scored tax proposal. Exemptions, changes in wages and employment, and other funding sources would change the required rate.
Replacing premiums with taxes changes how we pay for healthcare. It does not eliminate the cost of providing it.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
There's a lot of talk about universal healthcare, and nothing that shows a person knows less about healthcare policy than when they state, “well the rest of the world has it figured out!”
They haven't.
There is tremendous variety in the healthcare systems of different countries. You've got Canada's dominant government payer. Meanwhile, Switzerland and The Netherlands have no government payer, just a bunch of private insurance plans. England has a government run hospital system while France is mostly private. Singapore uses health savings accounts for routine care and Chile gives vounchers to access private practice.
Some policies are great. Some are awful. All have tradeoffs.
Universal coverage is a worthy goal. We can learn a lot about how to get there from looking at other countries.
Check out my latest below:
The Boyd Institute retweeted
If you have private insurance now, you’re not going to like Medicare for All.
Your taxes will go up to pay for it.
“That’s fine, because I won’t have to pay my private insurance premiums any more!” You might say.
But since we already spend too much on Medicare, even with the tax increases, we won’t be able to fund ample high-quality access for all.
Low-value utilization will go up. We have two very strong studies that show this. So you’ll be waiting even longer for doctor appointments than you do now. You find out you need cataract surgery or a hip replacement and are told the wait is 6 months to a year. The appointments will be even shorter, the doctors more burned out. It’ll take three visits with an NP before you even get to see a doctor.
So you buy private insurance, if you have enough disposable income after the extra taxes. Except now the insurance premium isn’t tax advantaged, so it costs you more than it did previously.
In the end, with the increased taxes and higher priced private insurance, you’re paying more for the same care you have now.
What would Medicare for All look like if it were funded through a payroll tax?
CBO’s broadest illustrative coverage scenario requires approximately $3 trillion in additional annual federal funding in 2030, including dental, vision, hearing, and expanded long term care.
On an assumed $14 trillion payroll base, funding that gap would require approximately 21.4% in additional combined employer and employee payroll taxes, while existing federal health funding continues.
Split equally, with no cap on taxable wages, that means 10.7% from you and 10.7% from your employer:
• $50,000 salary: $5,350 more annually from each.
• $100,000 salary: $10,700 more from each.
• $150,000 salary: $16,050 more from each.
• $250,000 salary: $26,750 more from each.
• $500,000 salary: $53,500 more from each—$107,000 combined annually!
Everyone with taxable wages contributes, while coverage extends to children, retirees, and people who aren’t working.
Covered insurance premiums would disappear. Some workers and employers would save overall. Others would pay more. Employer contributions also affect the cost of employing someone and can influence wages and hiring.
This is an illustrative calculation using CBO’s spending estimate, not a CBO-scored tax proposal. Exemptions, changes in wages and employment, and other funding sources would change the required rate.
Replacing premiums with taxes changes how we pay for healthcare. It does not eliminate the cost of providing it.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Excellent post from @boydinst
Highly recommend for my friends @awgaffney and @ajlamesa
open.substack.com/pub/boydin…
The Boyd Institute retweeted
This is from my Virginia Obamacare plan choices.
Who is buying this plan? Comes out to $67,000 per year in premiums!
Ask me what the cheapest Carefirst plan costs.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
I'm still fighting an $8,500 out of pocket bill from the birth of my child.
There is something perverse and insidious about how healthcare is handled in America.
No, this isn't a “Medicare for all” or “mah freedom” thing. Its something else.
The out of pocket price for a standard baby delivery at my hospital is about $11k.
That means, if I showed up with my wailing wife, uninsured, I would have been billed up to $11k.
But I am insured. So what was my bill: $8,500--- AFTER INSURANCE PAID $22K!!!!
Now think about that for a moment. The hospital was already paid more than TWICE the cash price.
And they still are coming after me for more.
Seriously though, what is the insurance company doing?!
You mean to tell me that the insurance company, with 80 million subscribers, has less negotiating power than a bloke off the street?
Something is deeply wrong with the incentive structure that will only be fixed by dismantling the whole system and starting over.
Biggest "the kids are fucked" moment I've had recently was at the dentist.
Walked in with a cracked tooth and dental insurance I'd paid for all year.
Thought that meant I was covered.
Instead, the front desk quoted me $1,900 for a crown, then explained my plan only pays up to $1,500 total per year, and I'd already used part of it on a cleaning.
Got home and started reading about how dental insurance works.
Turns out the yearly maximum on a lot of plans has barely moved in decades, while the cost of the work kept climbing.
I was naive enough to think insurance meant the bill got handled.
Apparently, I was just paying for a coupon that runs out.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Biggest "the kids are fucked" moment I've had recently was at the dentist.
Walked in with a cracked tooth and dental insurance I'd paid for all year.
Thought that meant I was covered.
Instead, the front desk quoted me $1,900 for a crown, then explained my plan only pays up to $1,500 total per year, and I'd already used part of it on a cleaning.
Got home and started reading about how dental insurance works.
Turns out the yearly maximum on a lot of plans has barely moved in decades, while the cost of the work kept climbing.
I was naive enough to think insurance meant the bill got handled.
Apparently, I was just paying for a coupon that runs out.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Healthcare costs an employer $10,000 per year for an employee making $40k
And we still can’t complete with large chains and negotiated plans
People think Obamacare is taxing billionaires to provide healthcare
It’s actually killing small business competition to help conglomerates
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Couldn’t agree more with Nathan Smith’s passionate, dogmatic insistence on price transparency in healthcare. Inspired by him, I’ve already been agitating for it in my own medical visits.
More solutions like this, please! via @boydinst
boydinstitute.org/p/path-to-…
The Boyd Institute retweeted
US healthcare costs are rising at an alarming rate:
Medical care prices have surged +132% since 2000, the largest increase among major consumer spending categories.
Over the same period, shelter costs have risen +127%, while food prices have soared +112%.
Price increases across all these spending categories have outpaced overall CPI, which is up +99% since 2000.
As a result, ~30% of insured US adults have skipped or delayed getting healthcare they needed due to costs over the last 12 months, according to a KFF survey.
Healthcare costs have never been higher.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
A pretty strong case for boring, economically-sound, pro-growth/market policies.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
holy shit, it’s him.
Surprise 1: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech
.
.
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Surprise 2: that person is me
Surprise 3: I’m here to tell you all about it
Yes, this is what you think it is; after 6 yrs of increasingly loose anonymity: the Professor Oak reveal post
…and yes, it has gotten so boring around here that I’m literally doxxing myself to spice up the timeline
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Ok, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cody Tranbarger. I mostly tweet, but occasionally find time to dabble in drug dev & starting/building biotechs. My past lives span the VC, crossover, startup continuum; Prof Oak has been my way of keeping a digital foot in those worlds, despite having my physical feet planted elsewhere.
The past 18 mo, ‘elsewhere’ was Mithril Medicine, a co. I founded to develop bsAbs for LAMA2-CMD & other ECM-related genetic diseases.
Mithril was born out of hands-on building with @MikeNGladstone, @JasonPaulRhodes, @LifeSciVC, & team @atlasventure. Somehow, I made enough half-decent calls along the way (even a broken clock is right twice a day, eh?) to convince them Mithril/I warranted a small seed. While I can hardly rationalize such an outrageously cavalier bet, I’m grateful for it, & I'd partner with Atlas again in a heartbeat.
In typical AV fashion, Mithril’s primordial form was virtual, decentralized, & ultra-lean. This stage tends to be short-lived, but for Mithril, it worked surprisingly well, for surprisingly long, thanks in part to the rapid maturation of the AI tools I used liberally.
Eventually, Mithril became a bit of an experiment itself - to find the upper bound of how far it could scale as a single operator + a bunch of Claude (+ a stellar bench of part-time consultants).
In parallel, I started spending time with @nc_frey, @an1lam, & @CoefficientBio team; and promptly experienced, for the 1st time, AI at the frontier. Soon thereafter, Mithril stopped looking like an experiment, & started looking like a preview of an entirely new operating model.
From that spark came “Pipeline-in-a-Person.” The idea immediately resonated when we shared it here back in April; and it was central to the shared vision that led to Anthropic’s acquisition of Mithril, & my joining the team.
Why join Anthropic? Three reasons.
(1) For Mithril, the programs continue, with more resources & infrastructure behind them, and as much Claude as I can put to work.
(2) For me, the chance to start several more programs, & find out how many one person can actually run in parallel - an almost unprecedented luxury for a curious drug hunter.
(3) For our mission, a path to institutionalize & scale this new way of working, then put it in the hands of all of biopharma, all over the world - which, candidly, I find the most energizing.
Will AI x Bio cure diseases? Unequivocally yes, imo… but not by the route that gets the most airtime. Rather than timeline acceleration & compression, I see orchestration & parallelization as today's low-hanging fruit.
Most drug hunters see a handful of go/no-go calls in a career, & spend entirely too much of the rest trading emails (my inbox can attest).
Give them the bandwidth to run several programs at once, and the time to focus on scientific judgment, and I’m willing to bet they’ll make better calls. And at scale, better calls translate to more drugs, higher hit rates, broader patient impact, & likely, a disease or 10 or 100 cured. I couldn't be more excited to build toward that future @AnthropicAI.
Finally, a heartfelt thank you to BioTwitter/X. The end of anonymity is bittersweet, but if anyone’s earned a proper introduction, you all have.
It’s difficult to overstate how much this app has done for me: a decade of education, plenty of friends, many job opportunities, several mentors, a few investors, even a co-founder (fmr). It was the generosity of this community that inspired me to start posting 6 years ago, after just as many years lurking. I hope I’ve been able to pay it forward, in my own small way.
But, to be clear, Prof Oak isn’t going anywhere. Same beat, same themes, and now, a front-row seat to drug development at the frontier. Stay tuned for dispatches from the trenches; and remember...
Gotta Cure 'Em All
The Boyd Institute retweeted
This piece rightly calls out the political problem: To increase affordability, we need to cut high payments to hospitals. Yet hospitals are often the “beloved” employer in a politician’s district.
But I think the job loss trade-off may be overstated here.
NEW: American healthcare is like manufacturing in 1979, and hospital towns are the new factory towns. That’s a political trap for reform. boydinstitute.org/p/welcome-…
The Boyd Institute retweeted
BlueCross vs Rebel+Sedera -
For the invididual you save a few bucks but get rebel's concierge level service included.
For the family, you get rebel's service plus save a TON of money.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
America spends universal-healthcare money without getting universal healthcare. Crazy.
from my essay, "healthcare is eating America" jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/he…
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Retirees are scheduled to receive more then SEVEN TIMES as much in Social Security benefits than what they themselves pay in taxes.
Adding the employer payment and adjusting for inflation and interest, it’s still 133% as much.
Some shocking figures in today's @washingtonpost editorial:
- "Seniors making six figures receive over a third of all Social Security benefits"
- "A husband and wife with an income around $100,000 who turned 65 years old in 2025 are expected to receive 4.4 times as much in Medicare benefits (in present value and net of premiums) as they paid in Medicare payroll taxes..."
America's heading towards bankruptcy, while forcing younger workers to subsidize the comfortable retirement lifestyles of millionaires.
If young people today don't like being told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, maybe it's because the people giving this advice are some of the largest beneficiaries of welfare.
The Boyd Institute retweeted
Republican members of Congress will literally propose legislation to expand Medicare subsidies for senior couples making $218,000 to $342,000 a year.
And then they'll go on TV and talk about how they're fighting "socialism". And tell young people to stop looking for handouts.
