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Averages are Overrated

by EducationMacro Trends

I've always liked understanding the world through numbers, and markets are the beautiful impartial scorekeeper. When I was a teenager I used to compare the price of things to Wendy's cheeseburgers. "That's like 35 Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers!" I would say in disbelief. When I was hungry I was more price sensitive of the ratio of burgers to movie tickets or baseball cards. I felt warm inside when I later read about The Economist's Big Mac Index a cool and simple way to compare similar countries curre ...

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On RVs and Write-Offs

by Industry TrendsInvesting

Businesses love metrics. One form or novel way (a 5 on the hack prowess scale) is to find the perfect metric that makes the future a little more predictable. The eager student tells the elderly person, "Teach me to be wealthy, only quicker" to paraphrase C.T. Munger. A year after the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Warren Buffett was interviewed and asked what metric he'd look at if he had to reach for one while stranded on an island. He first said freight car loadings, then truck tonnage moved b ...

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The $4,500 Deductible

by EducationIndustry Trends

$4,537 can buy a lot of Skittles363,000+ (75 cents per pack and 60 skittles per package)]. It buys the average single deductible for an unsubsidized enrollee with healthcare coverage on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. At 3.4x less, the $1,350 average deductible for the 152 million who get their insurance through an employer looks benevolent. In spite of having the word affordable in the title of the ACA, costs continue to be a problem. For 2 million people, or 17% of the ACA enrollees, ...

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The $20,000 Price Tag: Insights into the 2018 Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Survey.

by Industry TrendsMacro TrendsTelemedicineThought Leadership

Today the cost of healthcare landed on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, just below a story on bond yields, and next to the dancing UK Prime Minister, Teresa May. The angle of the story is how the cost of family healthcare premiums in the United States now approaches $20,000. The genesis of it was yesterday's release of the annual Kaiser Family Foundation Survey on employer-sponsored healthcare. It's the industry study for trends affecting the 152,000,000 people in the US who have benef ...

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In Praise of the Six Page Narrative

by EducationThought Leadership

Jeff Bezos is famous for being customer-centric, so much so that Amazon's annual letters proudly say, "We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company." Shipping, easy returns, streaming, and Kindle are proof. "Free" 2-day shipping for Prime membership is a big part for me. So far this year I've ordered 54 packages, 1.4 per week. Another cultural strength is its lack of flashy presentations. Amazon doesn't do PowerPoint or other slide shows. They prefer memos of up to six pages, reviewed in ...