Interesting Links for 10-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Russia using Wagner in Africa to displace the West and erode democracies

(tags:russia africa corruption )

2. Global warming increases ocean temperatures, stripping the seas of oxygen

(tags:oxygen ocean fish doom )

3. People are publishing AI books with real authors' names.

(tags:ai writing publishing fraud )

4. Covid testing in Scottish hospitals, care homes and prisons to end

(tags:scotland pandemic )

5. Norway fines Facebook owner Meta $100k/day over privacy breaches

(tags:norway facebook privacy regulation )

6. SUSE, the German Linux company, appear to be deeply anti-semitic

(tags:Jews linux OhForFucksSake )

7. Inside Keir Starmer's plan to 'annihilate the left' and appoint 'middle-class and dull' candidate MPs

(tags:labour politics )

8. The electoral breach in the UK was all Microsoft's fault

(tags:uk hacking microsoft )

9. Complex ape-man culture, with burial practices, may have existed in Africa 300,000 years ago

(tags:africa humans evolution society culture death )

10. Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness

(tags:cancer divorce gender )

Comments

[bens_dad]

10 I wonder how big a part the US health insurance system plays in this ?

[andrewducker]

When my first wife got cancer I heard that it was relatively common with husbands. So probably pretty bad over here too. May be worse in America of course!

[bens_dad]

I guess it must be an old problem since the Church puts "in sickness and in health" into the vows.

[hairyears]

I read your question as: does the US health system provide a compelling incentive to divorce a terminally-ill spouse before they are bankrupted by medical bills?

[bens_dad]

Partly, but more specifically, I am assuming a substantial gender-skew in single-income couples, and suspect that that will create gendered incentives for anyone considering divorcing a terminally-ill spouse.

If you rely on your spouse's health insurance, even if they are sick you may find it too expensive to leave, whereas dropping a sick spouse from your insurance might be personally financially beneficial ?

Thinking further, I realize that I have been assuming that it is the healthy partner initiating divorce.
It could be that being faced with a life-expectancy of months or a few years rather than decades, the sick partner decides that the spouse doesn't fit their new plans for the rest of their life.
However, at least on a partial reading, the paper doesn't say anything to suggest this was true for these patients.