Tag: "Medicare"

Can an Independent Medicare Commission Control Health Care Costs?

No. At least not the way politicians are thinking about it in Washington.

Wait a minute Goodman. Don’t you remember a letter signed by 23 economists (including two Nobel Prize winners) saying that we need an Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to “bend the cost curve?” Darn. I was hoping you had forgotten that.  I certainly tried to forget it, but the memory lingers. I also remember a second letter, signed by 26 economists, saying that the IMAB needs even more power than the Reid bill proposes to give it.

But as previously explained, their recommendations have no connection to any economic principles taught in any economics textbook. They should be thought of as “wishful thinking,” rather than “economists’ advice.”

 

Is that all there is?

 

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Dec 16, 2009 | 12 comments | by

A Pictoral Argument Against the Medicare Buy In

Uwe Reinhardt suggests that this is a good metaphor for what will happen if the Medicare buy-in goes through. Patients will end up in a mud bath.

Dec 15, 2009 | 6 comments | by

Medicare Buy In Would Be Very Expensive

Allowing people age 55 to 64 to “buy in” to Medicare:

That could cost about $7,600 a year per person or $15,200 for a couple, according to a budget office analysis of an earlier version of the concept.

In return for lower coverage:

The Democrats’ bill would limit out-of-pocket spending on health care by people in private plans ($5,000 a year for individuals and $10,000 for families). Medicare does not have such limits.

And inflated premiums:

Marilyn Moon, a health economist and former public trustee of Medicare, said… Medicare premiums could be higher than premiums charged by private health plans…

Moreover, private plans would have large numbers of healthy people under the age of 55, whose premiums could help cover costs for those 55 to 64. “Such cross-subsidies would not be available under the new Medicare option,” she said.

Full report from The New York Times here.

Dec 14, 2009 | 8 comments | by

Should Eligibility for Medicare Be Lowered to Age 55?

“The irony of this late-breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.”  — Washington Post

“Any plan to expand Medicare, which is the government’s largest public plan, beyond its current scope does not solve the nation’s health care crisis, but compounds it. … This scenario follows the typical pattern for price controls —reduced access, compromised quality and increasing costs anyway. We need to address these problems — not perpetuate them — through health reform legislation.”                    — Mayo Clinic

“A Medicare buy-in…would add millions of more patients to a program where it is difficult for a new enrollee to get an appointment with a physician.”                       — American Medical Association

“Medicare pays hospitals just 91 cents for each dollar of care provided. …  Adding millions of people to these programs at a time when they already severely underfund hospitals is unwise and should be opposed.”  — American Hospital Association

Dec 10, 2009 | 7 comments | by

Seven Things You Probably Don’t Know about the Senate Health Bill

This is from Kaiser Health News:

  1. Employers would be required to provide an unpaid “reasonable break time for nursing mothers” in the first year after giving birth.
  2. $400 million is allocated “to help teens make the transition to adulthood.”
  3. A temporary “reinsurance” program under which the government would pick up 80 percent of some high-cost insurance claims for retirees who are under 65 but who still get health insurance from their former employer.
  4. There will be higher Medicare payments for bone density scans.
  5. Nonprofit hospitals would have to limit how much they charge low-income uninsured emergency patients to the lowest amount they receive from insured patients for the same services.
  6. Non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans would have to spend at least 85 cents of every premium dollar on health services or forfeit their special federal tax deductions.
  7. Pharmaceutical benefit managers would have to disclose details on discounts they negotiate on prescription drugs with retail pharmacies and wholesalers.
Dec 02, 2009 | 7 comments | by

2009/11/30

Getting it wrong the first time: Almost one-fourth of Medicare heart patients are readmitted within 30 days.

Almost one in ten surgeons have made “major” errors recently.

Study: Meditation reduces heart attacks and strokes.

meditation

Nov 30, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Taking the Gloves Off

On the federal commission to control Medicare spending:

A global budget is like “bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don’t see the faces of the people you kill.”

— Alain Enthoven, Stanford University

On the Dartmouth Atlas claims of wasteful health care spending:

It’s “malarkey.” The idea came from “a bunch of clowns.”

— Richard Cooper, University of Pennsylvania

On ObamaCare:

Their far-reaching overhaul of the health-care system… would almost certainly make matters worse. It would create new, open-ended medical entitlements that threaten higher deficits and would do little to suppress surging health costs… The president, his advisers and allies have… blatantly contradictory objectives [that] require them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

— Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post

Nov 17, 2009 | 6 comments | by

The Rationing Commission

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission would have to meet certain budget targets each year:

  • Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation.
  • After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.
  • Until 2019 the commission will only be allowed to attack Medicare Advantage and to raise premiums for Medicare prescription drug coverage.
  • But a decade from now, all providers are fair game — which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare’s spending explodes.

Full Wall Street Journal editorial here.

Nov 16, 2009 | 5 comments | by

2009/11/16

Cost of war in Afghanistan: $1 million per soldier.

Hospital mistakenly declares man dead: Loses Social Security and Medicare.

Finnair is offering frequent flyers free plastic surgery in exchange for air miles. Breast enlargement costs 120 New York flights.

Nov 16, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Does Anyone Believe the ObamaCare Cuts in Medicare Spending are Real? Probably Not.

This is John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker:

Reductions in Medicare outlays, according to this CBO analysis, would save four hundred and twenty-six billion dollars between 2010 and 2019 compared with current plans. Look a bit more closely, and you find that more than half of the Medicare savings (two hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars) come from cutting payments to providers of services under the regular program; most of the rest (a hundred and seventy billion dollars) come from changing the way payments are set in the Medicare Advantage program. Does anybody really believe that these savings will materialize? For decades now, Congress has been promising to reduce the growth of Medicare outlays, and yet every year they continue to go up.

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

Nov 13, 2009 | 5 comments | by
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