Medicare: A few more issues Many people look forward to Medicare as the primary source of funding for health problems they will be facing as they get older. No doubt, Medicare can be a big help, but there are several caveats. For one thing, physicians who accept Medicare patients may be doing so at costs that exceed the reimbursements they get from Medicare. Those who do accept Medicare have to assume that the shortfall will be made up by other patients. You may still be able to see a physician of your choice, but you will be responsible for payment. Of the various medical specialties, psychiatry has the largest share of practitioners who have opted out of Medicare: 42%. If you are enrolled in original Medicare and your doctor opts out of the Medicare program, you can find and compare health care providers near you at http://www.medicare.gov Medicare reimbursement rates have spiraled downward over the years and are typically even lower than those paid by private hea
FAANGs? No, that’s not a typo. It’s about the ongoing disparity between overall market returns and the price action of a few large tech companies for nearly a decade. Until recently, FAANG stood for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Although Google renamed itself Alphabet and Facebook morphed into Metaverse, current conversations continue to speak of them as before. A distant cousin of the FAANGs emerged almost a half century ago. That cousin was known as the Nifty Fifty, which included such names as General Electric, Coca-Cola, and IBM. The Nifty Fifty group also included Xerox, Polaroid, and Eastman Kodak. What the FAANGs have in common with their ancestors is extraordinarily high price-earnings ratios (i.e., valuations). These were referred to as one-decision stocks. Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel suggested that investors could buy them and hold forever, but that suggestion didn’t turn out well. The extreme bear market of the early 1970s crushed va