Tag: "Medicare"

In the News and on the Net

Grace-Marie Turner and Joe Antos have an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on the new Republican health plan. Both writers worked on the messaging for McCain’s health plan in the last election. They’re doing a better job this time around. I’ll have more to say about the plan next week.

I have an editorial on “A Medicare Explosion: How to Diffuse a Ticking Time Bomb” at Forbes online.

We’re now in the second week of a lively discussion on the decline of conservatism – what caused it, what it means – at the Gary Becker/Richard Posner blog.

May 21, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Medicare vs. the Private Sector

This is Scott Gottlieb, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

  • A recent report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers that examined 10 of the nation's largest commercial health plans found that eight had implemented performance-based pay measures for doctors.
  • [In] Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, doctors are paid more for delivering better outcomes.
May 20, 2009 | 1 comment | by

Very Strange Commonwealth Poll

Polling results from the Commonwealth Fund claim that seniors like Medicare better than nonseniors like their private insurance. (I'm sure it was accompanied by the standard-but-hard-to-believe disclaimer denying any desire to influence legislation, including the is-a-public-plan-a-good-idea debate in Congress.)

Uwe Reinhardt sent me the results along with his condolences; and I haven't really looked at them closely. But do I really need to? Why can't I dismiss this nonsense based on economic theory alone?

Remainder below the fold.

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May 19, 2009 | 9 comments | by

NCPA Medicare Reform Proposal at Stiglitz/DeLong Web Site

The Medicare reform proposal developed by Andrew Rettenmaier and Thomas Saving and published by the NCPA is being highlighted in a surprising place: The Economists' Voice, edited by Joe Stiglitz and Brad DeLong. My own version of this proposal is here and here.

May 13, 2009 | 2 comments | by

Read It and Weep

Social Security/Medicare Trustees Reports 2009:  Change from 2008
(Ignores existence of Social Security and Medicare Trust funds)

Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report

The unfunded liability shown in the table above is the difference between the benefits that have been promised to retirees and what will be collected in dedicated taxes and Medicare premiums.  Compared to 2008, this debt has risen by more than $5 trillion. While the Trustees' Report includes the Social Security and Medicare trust fund, making the unfunded liabilities appear less than above, this trust fund has been spent on other programs. The NCPA chart above reflects the true unfunded obligations.

May 13, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Penalizing Everything We Like

The problem:

One in five Medicare patients, for example, returns to the hospital within 30 days. Over all, readmissions cost the federal government an estimated $17 billion a year.

One hospital's solution:

Nicollet Health Services, a hospital and clinic system based in St. Louis Park, Minn. started tackling the readmission problem four years ago, spending as much as $750,000 annually on more nurses and on sophisticated software to track heart failure patients after they left the hospital. It reduced readmissions for such patients to only 1 in 25, down from nearly 1 in 6…… The effort saved Medicare roughly $5 million a year.

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May 12, 2009 | 2 comments | by

Entitlement Madness, Part II

At nearly $86 trillion, Medicare's unfunded liability is almost six times the size of Social Security's. Unfortunately, there's no easy way out. If we were to end Medicare tomorrow, collecting no more payroll taxes and allowing no more benefit accruals, we would still need $32 trillion in the bank right now to pay for the benefits people have already earned!

In the meantime, the cash flow deficits in Medicare and Social Security are on a course to crowd out every other federal program. As I explained at the National Journal Health blog, we cannot pay benefits with Trust fund IOUs that the government has written to itself. So to cover these deficits, we will need one in ten income tax dollars in 2012, one in four by 2020 and one in two by 2030.

Ah, but here's even more depressing news. Awful as all these numbers are, the reality is even worse. The reason? To estimate future Medicare spending the Social Security/Medicare Trustees and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) must forecast health care spending as a whole. And neither agency is forecasting the actual path we are on.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkZLgJKQ46w

Let Me Help

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May 11, 2009 | 10 comments | by

Who Goes to the Emergency Room?

Patients at the Emergency Room

 

Let's see.  Tell me again why it's good for the uninsured to enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP?

May 11, 2009 | 6 comments | by

Health Care vs. the Rest of the Economy

Think for a moment about how other large businesses operate in the modern world.  FedEx and UPS track a combined 23 million packages each day in real time. You can go online, for free, and track the movement of your item from pickup to delivery.  Exceedingly rare are stories of FedEx or UPS losing packages or about how those companies are rife with fraud.

Large, sophisticated retailers in the supermarket, clothing or auto parts industries can tell you every night how many cans of soup, pairs of pants, or spark plugs they sold that day in every one of their facilities all over the world.

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May 08, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Entitlement Madness, Part I

In the near future, the Social Security/Medicare Trustees will produce their annual report. Gloomy as the report will no doubt be, it will likely be a whitewash of the underlying reality. If the past is a guide to the future, the release of the report will focus everyone's attention on the trust funds (which scholars understand have no economic importance whatsoever) and ignore the huge unfunded liabilities we keep piling up and the severe cash flow problems elderly entitlement programs are already creating.

These obligations are especially important in light of the enormous increase in unfunded liability and cash flow deficits that are about to be added. Currently, about 100 million people depend on Medicare and Medicaid for their health care. Under President Obama's new health reform plan, an additional 100 million or so could be enrolled in public and quasi-public plans with the entitlement guarantee that their premiums will not exceed 10% of family income.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMJlIFo3XG4

Ground Control to Major Tom

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May 04, 2009 | 7 comments | by
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