STAT+: A Medicare surprise, and a policy researcher purge

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I love to play card games. You wanna play Texas hold ’em? I’m there. Part of any card game is shuffling, of course. And I just learned that every single shuffle of a deck of cards is unique. Never, in the history of humans, have there been identical shuffles. Blows my mind! Shuffle up and deal your thoughts: bob.herman@statnews.com or bobjherman.09 on Signal.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 2052

Politicians like to wail about the prospects of Medicare going “bankrupt.” Medicare can’t really go bankrupt since payroll taxes are always coming in and will fund some percentage of the benefits. But monitoring the depletion date of Medicare’s main trust fund is a good way to gauge the financial health and trends of the program.

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