Last week I argued that budgeting for Medicare’s hospital insurance program is flawed. Today, I offer two ways to fix it (and reject a third). Medicare Part A is one of several federal programs that control spending through a “belt and suspenders” combination of regular program rules (the belt) and an overall limit (the suspenders). [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Health’
Fixing Medicare’s Double-Counting Problem
Posted in Budget, Politics, Taxes, tagged Budget, Budget Process, Health, Politics, Taxes on May 18, 2012 | 1 Comment »
The Fight over Medicare Double Counting
Posted in Budget, Politics, Taxes, tagged Budget, Budget Process, Health, Medicare, Taxes on May 9, 2012 | 6 Comments »
The recent double-counting dispute isn’t just about politics; it also reveals a flaw in budgeting for Medicare Part A. Budget experts are waging a spirited battle over the Medicare changes that helped pay for 2010’s health reform. In April, Chuck Blahous, one of two public trustees of the program, released a study arguing that the [...]
High-Deductible Health Plans Are Growing Rapidly
Posted in Health, tagged Health on September 30, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Here’s another important fact from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent survey of the employer health insurance market. As shown in the chart above, health insurance plans with high deductibles and a saving option (HDHP/SO) have been gaining market share rapidly. Only 1-in-25 enrollees were in such plans in 2006; today that figure is more than [...]
Health Reform and Skyrocketing Insurance Premiums
Posted in Health, tagged Health on September 27, 2011 | 7 Comments »
Family health insurance premiums surged 9% in 2011 according to new data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s the fastest health insurance inflation since 2005: Insurance premiums (in red) thus outpaced both general inflation (gray) and worker earnings growth (blue) by a wide margin. That scary spike raises an obvious question: Is health insurance more [...]
One Man’s Cost is Another Man’s Income
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, Health on January 22, 2011 | 5 Comments »
The latest must-read New Yorker piece by Atul Gawande describes recent efforts to cut costs and improve quality by coordinating patient care – in particular that of the most expensive patients. In “The Hot Spotter” (gated), he follows several innovators, including Rushika Fernandopulle, who directs a clinic-based program in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fernandopulle and his [...]
What is Health Care Reform?
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Budget, CBO, Health, Politics on January 21, 2011 | 8 Comments »
Health care reform increases the federal deficit over the next ten years. The health care reform legislation, however, reduces the deficit. Greg Mankiw set off a vigorous discussion in the blogosphere (see, e.g., Ezra Klein, Clive Crook, and the Austin Frakt) with a provocative analogy about health care reform: I have a plan to reduce the [...]
Why Does It Cost $230 Billion to Repeal Health Reform?
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health on January 7, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Last spring, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the new health legislation would reduce the deficit by $143 billion over ten years. Yesterday, CBO estimated that repealing that legislation would increase the deficit by $230 billion over ten years. What gives? Why would it cost $87 billion more to repeal the law than was saved by enacting [...]
The Budget Uncertainties of Health Reform
Posted in Budget, Health, Politics, tagged Budget, Health, Politics on June 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Back in March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the new health legislation would reduce the federal budget deficit by about $140 billion over the next ten years and by about 0.5% of gross domestic product in the decade after that. Ever since, analysts have been debating whether we should believe those estimates. Some [...]
The Second Rule of Hospitals
Posted in Health, tagged Health, Same-Sex Marriage on April 16, 2010 | 6 Comments »
The first rule of hospitals is to try to stay out of them. Unfortunately, that rule must sometimes be broken. So let me suggest a second rule: no one should be alone in a hospital. Hospitals can work miracles, saving lives and improving quality of life. But they can still be dangerous and (ironically) inhospitable [...]
Most Requested
Twitter
Get Updates by Email
Get Updates by RSS
Share or Bookmark
-
Recent Posts
- The World’s Most Traveled Bird?
- Is the United States the Best Place for Women?
- Is the Reliability of Public Opinion Surveys Declining?
- Fixing Medicare’s Double-Counting Problem
- Energy Security, the Infographic
- The Fight over Medicare Double Counting
- Why Free is a Bad Price, American Airlines Edition
- Jobs Report – The Soft Side of Mediocre
- Investing in Memories, Ocelot Edition
- Advanced Game Theory, Golden Balls Edition
- Entitlement Spending in One Picture
- Talking Tax Reform on the PBS Newshour
- The Federal Budget in One Picture
- Should We Blame TurboTax for Tax Code Complexity?
- How Big Are Tax Preferences?
30-Second Economics
Tags
Categories
Archives
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
Translate this blog into
