Nikhil Krishnan at X: I was surprised at how much Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security is now boosting local economies and personal incomes.
If you look through the data, Medicare/Medicaid have become the largest sources of revenue for non-metropolitan areas in particular. Some statistics in the data:.
- Government transfers are now 17.6% of total personal income in the US, compared to about 8% in 1970. Medicare and Medicaid are 46% of all government transfers!
- 53% of the provinces receive more than 25%+ of their income from government transfers (this covers about 72 million people).
- Kentucky appears to be the home of the colonel's and the government's transfer programs. 12 of the top fifteen counties receiving government transfers are located there. Owsley County receives 63% of personal income from transfers, and Medicaid alone is 32% of all county income.
These government transfers through Medicaid/Medicare are alchemically transformed into jobs. Phoebe Putney Health System has 6,000+ employees and is the largest employer in Southwest Georgia. Doherty County, where it is located, receives 34% of its personal income from government transfers.
In New York we have a program that pays friends and family as caregivers. In 2023, it grew by 57,000 jobs and became 38% of all job growth in the country (they made changes to the plan now that flattened it).
We have become a nation of health care jobs supported by government dollars. is it ok
I think this big deal worked for a while. We've still seen economic productivity, government spending hasn't gone too crazy yet, etc. But now several things are happening that indicate that the deal is falling apart.