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Thank you for your cutting edge reporting -- just one of many hats you wear.

Somewhat off-but-tangential-topic: We hear about all the deaths in the senior community because of (take your pick) deaths due to the virus, deaths due to the vaccines, deaths due to delayed medical procedures/tests because of lock-down policies, etc. My question is this. If there were all these deaths (and continuing excess deaths), wouldn't that impact the amount of funds available to Social Security and Medicare, and potentially alleviate the coming insolvency of those programs? I have read NOTHING on this. Am I missing something?

Now an anecdote that may partially answer my Medicare-part question above. There have been a few articles in The Wall Street Journal about real trouble in the Medicare Advantage world because of steeply increasing claims experience. I am a health insurance broker in MN, and about a third of my business is Medicare, and most of that is Medicare Advantage. Yesterday I received an email from one of the four carriers that I write for, namely UCare. They informed us brokers that they will no longer pay commissions on any of their Medicare Advantage products that become effective July 1st or thereafter, because of "unprecedented financial pressures". Upon an inquiry from me, their Director refused to say what those unprecedented financial pressures were. After my follow-up inquiry, he told me that a nonresponse is a response. Very interesting.