Tag Archives: Uninsured

Interesting Links

Hits & Misses – 2008/12/01

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Race Matters. Not surprising. But this is the first study [gated, but with abstract] I have seen that treats Medicaid enrollment as equivalent to being uninsured.

Geography Matters More. "While race matters….where you live can matter even more. Furthermore, there are some regions where African Americans receive equal or better care than whites." [link]

Insurance for Mainly Healthy People Is Cheap. According to an eHealth Insurance report, the average monthly premium was $130 per month for individual policies and $366 for families. Hat tip to Grace-Marie Turner.

Tobacco Deal, Ten Years On. Very funny video reenactment of how the deal was struck. [link]

Health Insurance

The Rich Go Bare

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Here is Jeff Goldsmith, writing on the Health Affairs Blog:

Perhaps the most troubling change last year was the growing affluence of the uninsured population. The number of uninsured people with household incomes under $50,000 fell by almost 1.2 million, while those earning more than $50,000 essentially remained flat. Those with household incomes over $50,000 – the top half of households in the country – account for 38.5% of the uninsured, continuing a pronounced upward shift in the income characteristics of the uninsured from the previous year.

Full post is here.

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 →

Health Insurance

Does Canada Really Have Universal Coverage?

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A Fraser Institute study concludes that Canada is no closer to universal coverage than the United States is.  Among the findings:

  • Canadian government data show an estimated 1.7 million Canadians (aged 12 and older) were unable to access a regular family physician in 2007.
  • The actual number of "effectively" uninsured Americans is less than half of the figure usually reported and being uninsured is usually only a temporary condition.
  • Based on these figures, the study estimates that the percentage of the population that was "effectively" uninsured for non-emergency, necessary medical services at any given time during 2007 was not significantly different between the two countries: 7.9 percent in the United States compared to 6 percent in Canada.
Health Insurance

News Flash: Universal Coverage Isn’t Free

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This amazing observation comes from the New York Times’ review of the documentary “Critical Condition.”:

Its real shortcoming, though, is the way it invokes health insurance as a pain-free panacea: If only X had had insurance, this $300,000 medical bill would have disappeared.

Sounds great, but as we’re finding out now in relation to the Wall Street bailout, someone has to pay for everything. Insuring everyone may be a worthy goal, but the film leaves largely unaddressed the broader questions of whether we collectively can afford the many treatments being made available by the rapid advance of medical science.

New Health Care Law

Commonwealth Votes Early ― for Obama

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After noting that its own plan (cost = $163 billion in 2008) "is similar to Obama's proposal," the Commonwealth Fund has done a side-by-side of the McCain and Obama health plans….and…..(are you ready?)….it likes Obama's better.  The report:

  • Presents no new research, but instead cuts and pastes from other studies.
  • Cherry picks the evidence – choosing to report only on what's good for Obama and bad for McCain, including ignoring a University of Minnesota economists' finding that the McCain plan would cut the number of uninsured in half.
  • Neglects to say that the Obama plan is completely pie-in-the-sky, with virtually no funding source now that Obama has pledged a maximum tax rate of 20% on capital gains and dividends and no payroll tax on the rich for the next decade.
  • Neglects to say that the McCain plan is designed to be revenue neutral over 10 years (no need to raise taxes) but will probably fall short if it cuts the number of uninsured in half.
Health Alerts

Walk-in Clinics

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NEWS FLASH: Led by Pete Stark (D-CA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), House Democrats today announced a plan to provide low-cost, high-quality, easy-access primary care to millions of low- and moderate-income Americans, including millions of the uninsured.  The plan: override a slew of anachronistic, bureaucratic, anti-entrepreneurial regulations that are thwarting the spread of walk-in clinics in drug stores, shopping malls and big box retail outlets and keeping them from realizing their full potential.  Among the regulations to be set aside is legislation authored by Stark himself.

Oops.  I was just day dreaming. Continue reading Walk-in Clinics →

Health Alerts

Response to a Critique of the McCain Health Care Plan

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An article in Health Affairs is a full-throated attack on the McCain health care plan.  A companion article attacked the Obama plan.  Strangely, no one was invited to defend either plan.

Written by Thomas Buchmueller, Sherry Glied, Anne Royalty and Katherine Swartz, the attack on McCain’s plan was called a “study” by Obama supporters [here] and by Bob Herbert [here] and other journalists – all of whom claimed that 20 million people would lose their health insurance.  In fact, there is no “study.”  The authors have produced no new empirical research.  And their conclusion was that the McCain plan would be a wash – the number newly acquiring insurance would roughly equal the number losing coverage.  This conclusion, in my opinion is absurd, but not nearly as absurd as what the journalists reported. Continue reading Response to a Critique of the McCain Health Care Plan →

Interesting Links

One Gene, One Disease? It's the premise behind the Genome project, but as previously reported [here] it rarely happens. Here's the reason: natural selection is too efficient to allow very many single gene culprits to survive. More here.

ER Patient Increases Not Caused by the Uninsured. The uninsured don't use the emergency room any more often than those with insurance. Also, the increase in ER visits over the past decade is mainly due to visits by insured, middle-class patients. Reasons: It may be easier to get care at the ER and (surprisingly) it may also cost less. [link]

ER Patients Confused. 78% go home without knowing what they need to know. Many return as a result. [link] This mimics the problem of inpatients: 18% of discharged Medicare patients are readmitted within 30 days. As previously reported [here], hospitals make money on all this. 

Premies Have Problems Later On. Even when they're born with no treatable medical problem, they have less chance of completing high school, completing college or earning high wages, according to a NEJM study [gated, but summarized here.] However, not factored in: IQ and socioeconomic status of the parents.

Stats on Premies

Health Alerts

Obama Health Advisors Over the Top

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Here is what David Cutler, chief policy advisor to Barack Obama, told the Wall Street Journal:

The heart of the McCain health plan is to take people who have secure, employer-based coverage (160 million of them) and throw them into the market where they buy on their own….

In the individual market, many of those will get turned down; others will get quoted unaffordable rates; still others will have pre-existing conditions excluded.

Full text here.  All of which shows that even really good economists are capable of forgetting everything they know in the heat of a political campaign. Continue reading Obama Health Advisors Over the Top →