Selena Simmons-Duffin

Specifically, in 2025, seniors paid $13.4 billion in higher premiums for doctor's office visits and outpatient services.

More than half of those enrolled in Medicare are in one of these private plans.

Republicans in Congress were long champions of the model, but bipartisan criticism has been growing because Medicare Advantage actually costs the government about 20% more per person than traditional Medicare.

Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hi, short wavers.

Selena Simmons Duffin in the host chair.

Years ago, I can't remember exactly when, I became aware that gay people are often the youngest kids in their families.

As a gay person who's the youngest in my family, there was something kind of appealing about this idea, like there was a statistical order to things, and I fit neatly into that order.

When I started reporting on the science behind the idea, the whole thing turned out to be much more interesting than I originally imagined.

Also stranger and darker.

That darkness comes in part from how scientists first started researching what makes people queer in the first place, near the middle of the last century.

That is writer Justin Torres.

He's thought a lot about the way scientists have studied sexuality.

Last year, he won the National Book Award for a novel titled Blackouts.

The queer people scientists were studying were also living in a world where this facet of their identity was dangerous.

So researchers first began studying queer people for generally sinister reasons at a time when being queer was dangerous.

And the studies themselves turned out to be really hard, says Jan Kabatek, a social scientist at the University of Melbourne.

With an exception.

The one thing that researchers zeroed in on that seemed to be actually real was this.