Red wine is healthier when it’s non-alcoholic (sorry).
ObamaCare premiums are about to skyrocket; they will double in some parts of the country.
The Obama Administration is will spending $17 million a month advertising for ObamaCare.
Emergency room visits increased after Massachusetts health reform was enacted.
Half of callers to Covered California give up as deadline looms.
Over the next 10 years, the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is scheduled to cut Medicare spending by $716 billion, primarily by reducing payments to doctors and hospitals. Further, those cuts in spending will continue indefinitely into the future. By 2060, one-fifth of Medicare will be gone. The Medicare actuaries and others have warned that these cuts will reduce access to care for seniors.
Fortunately, there is a better way ― proposed by Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier, Thomas R. Saving and Zijun Wang in a study for the National Center for Policy Analysis: The reform consists of two changes to current law: (1) raising the Medicare eligibility age to the same age as Social Security (and thereafter indexing it to increases in longevity) and (2) requiring higher income seniors to pay a greater share of their medical costs (or so-called means testing). This reform ensures that low income workers receive full benefits (defined as the average benefits retirees would receive if the ACA’s cost-cutting provisions are not realized) upon attaining the new eligibility age. Once seniors reach the new eligibility age:
Seniors should celebrate the administration’s decision to reverse its proposed restrictions of the Medicare Part D drug benefit plan.
By virtually all measures, Medicare Part D has been a great success. Seniors’ satisfaction rates average about 90 percent to 95 percent.
In January, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced plans to change how Medicare Part D plans are regulated. To save money, CMS wanted to block seniors’ access to drug plans that offer lower premiums (and lower copays) in return for patronizing a preferred pharmacy network. The changes would also have limited seniors’ access to certain medications.
After criticism launched from many fronts, including the NCPA, CMS this week announced it had backed away from its earlier recommendations to micromanage Medicare Part D drug plans.
Results indicate that obtaining prescription drug insurance through Medicare Part D was associated with an 8% decrease in the number of hospital admissions, a 7% decrease in Medicare expenditures, and a 12% decrease in total resource use. Gaining prescription drug insurance through Medicare Part D was not significantly associated with mortality. (NBER)
The Affordable Care Act makes health insurance more expensive for young adults while simultaneously making it far less risky to go without insurance according to a study by Conor Ryan, a health care analyst, and Chris Holt, the director of health care policy, at the American Action Forum. They find that opting out of coverage and paying their own costs out-of-pocket would be the most financially advantageous decision for most young adults.
014, 86 percent of young people would be better off opting out. As the penalty rises, that number will drop, down to 66 percent in 2019.
Tyler Cowen reviews the literature: the minimum wage does little to reduce poverty.
Margaret Carlson’s tribute to Tom Coburn.
CNS News interviews me on “death spirals.”
Bryan Caplan explains why economists put so high an economic value on life.
In Europe, immigrants can move to the country that pays the highest welfare benefits.
