Surprise medical bills don’t have to ruin your life

Plus: Crypto is good and evil. [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a grape-flavored bottle of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Avoid going broke]( on medical bills. - [Teenage energy angst]( is a thing. - Crypto is both [good]( and [bad](. - Maybe the army [should drive Teslas](. Knees Weak, Arms Spaghetti Time for an unsolicited, oddly personal fun fact! For my whole life, I’ve been told I have unnaturally “loose limbs” and “noodle arms” — something I most certainly inherited from my father. My dad is the oldest of ten children. When he tore his ACL as a kid, there was no talk of surgery at the dinner table, not when everyone was hankering to score an extra serving of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks simmered in a can of Campbell’s Tomato soup (this is 100% a real thing he ate as a child). When my dad tore his other ACL, he once again skipped the doctor’s office. So that’s why to this day he has no ACLs in his knees. But he still skis, golfs, and sometimes does pushups on the living room floor. Skipping the doctor is not out of the ordinary for many Americans, though the results aren’t always so positive. In a recent survey, 32% of respondents said they avoided seeking medical care because of cost. Erin Lowry knows the feeling: “Even when intense stomach cramps left me doubled over for hours, or a shooting pain in my foot felt like a stress fracture, I decided to wait and see if things would get better rather than risk a potentially costly hospital visit,” she writes. Amid sky-high inflation and student debt, [the last thing Americans need is a surprise medical bill](. Erin’s first step to avoiding hospital bills longer than CVS receipts? Cozy up with a good book — ahem, your insurance plan. Sure, it’s no “Great Gatsby,” but learning about your deductible just might help you avoid going broke. Read the [whole thing](. Top Shelf Energy In your youth, you may have imbibed certain substances you’d probably deem undrinkable today. Maybe for you it was Natty Light or Rumple Minze or Franzia (slap the bag, anyone?). For me, it was grape-flavored Karkov vodka. Let’s just say it gives rubbing alcohol a run for its money. But when you’re young, you drink anything. It’s what’s at the party! But as you get older, you ditch the $2 tequila shots and opt for a Ketel One dirty martini or a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Interestingly, the same thing happens with countries and their energy diet. Maybe they start out guzzling coal, but as they mature they start going for cleaner options such as gas — not top-shelf by any means, but far less embarrassing. Now many countries are seeking out even greener energy sources that are healthier, but also more expensive. Tyler Cowen writes [any such evolution is a positive development](, even if a country is just moving from coal to gas. Because most countries are still in their energy adolescence, gas demand will still be huge long after developed countries ditch it for greener stuff. “If you are bullish on green innovation, perhaps you should be bullish on innovation in fossil fuels as well,” Tyler suggests. Take India, for example. New Delhi is still trying to raise natural gas’s share of its energy supply from 7% to 15% by 2030. Andy Mukherjee writes this will simply “[hold the fort until better options — such as green hydrogen]( — become affordable for emerging markets.” But that could take a while. Put it this way: Karkov still sells at Total Wine for $13 a handle because some innocent 20-something will still choose to buy it. Bonus Energy Reading: Indonesia’s palm fruit fuels animals, vehicles and more. [A policy-driven shortage would cause widespread hunger](. — David Fickling Crypto: Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil? Both of these statements can be true: - Crypto is hastening an era of pseudonymity, a “[potential tonic for rampant credentialism]( and allows merit to win out.” - Crypto is being used as “[collateral to buy expensive houses]( using a more-or-less traditional mortgage, but with no dead-tree dollars down.” The first refers to [professional pseudonyms on social media](. Trung Phan explains how crypto is normalizing online personalities with identities distinct from the individuals running the account. A lot of people have started companies using pseudonymous social handles — [@betches](, [@litquidity](, [@girlwithnojob](, to name a few — to great success. Trung spoke with a popular pseudonymous Twitter account, [@BoredElonMusk](, which has amassed 1.7 million followers and counting. If you look to history, it’s not such a novel idea: Benjamin Franklin did it when he wrote under then pen name of Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow. While there are advantages to the crypto revolution, there are also some obvious problems. Mark Gongloff writes that “if you entered a contest to see who could design a financial instrument to lose the most money the fastest, you would struggle to come up with a better idea” than [crypto-backed mortgages](, a hot new product from a company called Milo Credit. Both crypto and housing are incredibly volatile assets these days, so combining the two basically forms a dangerous cocktail of “red-hot risk,” Mark warns. Telltale Charts Global armed forces account for around 5% of global carbon emissions. [If the U.S. military took a greener approach]( to cyberspace, non-tactical vehicles and more, it might actually be more effective, writes Bloomberg’s editorial board. [Robinhood’s golden age has come to an end](, writes Jonathan Levin. Just as your sourdough bread-baking days are over, so too are the diamond-hand, day-trading days of yore for your 17-year-old cousin Paul. Further Reading Nobody knows what went on inside Bill Hwang’s brain during the Archegos saga, but [let’s speculate, shall we](? — Matt Levine [The Teslafication of Twitter]( is easier said than done. — Liam Denning Mass layoffs were an unfortunate feature of the last recession. [It might be different this time](. — Conor Sen China needs a lot of help these days. [A weak yuan]( might be its only salvation. — Daniel Moss Some nations — India, Brazil, Israel — are staying neutral in Cold War 2. [Maybe that’s not such a bad thing](. — Hal Brands And the award for [Europe’s most dysfunctional bank]( goes to … Credit Suisse! No, but really. — Paul J. Davies [Do any of Boeing’s planes *not* have some kind of issue](? Asking for a friend. — Brooke Sutherland ICYMI Twitch might change [how it pays streamers](. According to Anthony Fauci, we can actually start saying “[post-pandemic](.” Disney tells Florida [it can’t cancel its government]( until it pays its debt. Kickers Area farmer unearths [4,500-year-old ancient goddess](. We all deal with unreasonable requests. [Here’s how to say no to them](. (h/t Sarah Green Carmichael) [The history of birth control]( involves alligator feces and corpse water. (h/t Mike Nizza) Notes:  Please send dirty martinis and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. 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