Tag Archives: health plan

Health Care Costs

Rethinking the Massachusetts Health Plan

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We find evidence that Massachusetts’ individual mandate induces uninsured residents to conceal their true insurance status. Even setting that source of bias aside, we find the official estimate reported by the Commonwealth almost certainly overstates the law’s impact on insurance coverage, likely by 45 percent. In contrast to previous studies, we find evidence of substantial crowdout of private coverage among low-income adults and children. The law appears to have compressed self-reported health outcomes, without necessarily improving overall health. Our results suggest that more than 60 percent fewer young adults are relocating to Massachusetts as a result of the law. Finally, we conclude that leading estimates understate the law’s cost by at least one third, and likely more.

Full Cato study by Alan Yelowitz and Michael F. Cannon.

New Health Care Law

What Should the President Say Tonight?

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This is the question at the National Journal Health Blog. Here is my answer:

Senator John McCain’s health plan would have insured just as many people as Barack Obama aims to insure — and at no additional cost to the Treasury. It would have substantially lowered health care costs and may have increased quality as well. On the demand side, it would have created new incentives for patients to shop for care, based on price and quality. On the supply side, it would have created a national market for insurance. The financing mechanism was more progressive than anything that has been proposed on the Democrat side of the aisle.

Barack Obama should have praised these sensible ideas and promised to work with both parties to enact some or all of them. Instead, he spent several hundred million dollars demagoguing them. In their place, he proposed a Rube Goldberg reform that cannot possibly work. What is now called “Obama Care” will increase costs, probably reduce quality, and (after spending more than $1 trillion) may not even increase access to care. 

So what should Obama say on Wednesday night?

How about, “I was wrong?”

Health Insurance

Stimulus for Health

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This is Robert Pear, writing in today's New York Times:

Altogether, the economic recovery bill would speed $127 billion over the next two and a half years to individuals and states for health care alone.

The specifics:

  • $87 billion increasing spending on Medicaid
  • $11 billion in Medicaid benefits for the unemployed
  • $29 billion subsidized COBRA benefits, allowing people to remain in their previous employer's health plan.

And this doesn't count the extra cost of COBRA to employers – making future employment and, in particular, future employer-based health insurance more expensive.

New Health Care Law

Update on the Left’s Favorite Health Plan

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Reimbursement rates are so low, and billing the program so complicated, that it is hard for internists to get beneficiaries access to specialized care or timely interventions. For  patients, many of whom are uneducated or don't speak English, Medicaid is replete with paperwork, regulations and rejections that make the program hard to navigate, writes Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Accumulating evidence shows that Medicaid recipients' poor health outcomes aren't just a function of their underlying medical problems, but a more direct consequence of the program's shortcomings.  Take the treatment of serious heart conditions: Continue reading Update on the Left’s Favorite Health Plan →

Health Alerts

A Health Plan for Barack Obama

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One of the best kept secrets in the last election was John McCain’s health plan. When focus groups revealed that ordinary voters had a hard time understanding the McCain plan, his campaign decided it was better not to explain it at all.

Other than two editorials in the Wall Street Journal (one by yours truly), I believe no McCain backer of substance really explained the McCain plan anywhere in print. Also, the only clear explanation on the Internet of how it all might work was at my blog. This left the field open for Barack Obama supporters to distort and mischaracterize the McCain plan, including some ideas that Obama’s health advisors supported before they became Obama advisors!

This was all very personally disappointing, since the McCain plan is based on Sen. Tom Coburn’s plan, which in turn draws on an article that Mark Pauly and I wrote for Health Affairs some years ago.

Yet there may be a silver lining here after all. As it turns out, to even begin to make good on the promises he has made, Barack Obama needs key elements of the McCain plan. He also needs key elements of Mitt Romney’s health reform, about which he has already had complimentary things to say. He can also borrow an idea or two from Sens. Ron Wyden and Bob Bennett. For that matter, he needs Pauly and Goodman, too. Here is how it might work.

Note: I’ve done versions of this for the Health Affairs blog and for the National Journal’s health blog. Continue reading A Health Plan for Barack Obama →

Health Alerts

Studies Rebuff McCain’s Critics

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The LewinGroup released a study of the McCain and Obama health plans last week. At the same time, University of Minnesota professor Roger Feldman and his colleagues released their study of the McCain plan, which complements their previous study of the Obama plan.

These are the only academic studies of the two health plans that exist.

Although they differ in important respects, there is one thing that the Lewin and Feldman studies have in common. Both show that McCain’s critics have been way off base.

A Big Whopper!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5icxIdAWPg

 

A Big Whopper with Cheese!

Continue reading Studies Rebuff McCain’s Critics →