Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

What about me!

by divorced one like Bush So I’ve been thinking: What, since the passage of Medicare has the federal government implemented that actually reduced the risk of living for the US citizen? No, tax cuts do not count. They do not reduce risk. We have reduced risk for business all over the place. NAFTA, CAFTA, exemption […]

Re-tooling the Medicare/medicaid model

rdan I read the Op-Ed in the Boston Globe and asked Doug to write a piece or pieces in a more detailed fashion. There have been allusions to this issue as a cost factor, but no policy consideration here to date. Post by Doug Brown Due to the complexity of organizations today, there is commonly […]

Will catastrophic only health insurance be rescinded in the end?

rdan Taunter explains how the .5% rescission rate figure discussed in the hearings on health insurance premiums and coverage is used to dismiss Congressional concerns as inconsequential and actually is a good business practice that will not change. It is worth going to the post to accurately follow the train of thought. Taunter concludes that […]

FYI on National Health Insurance

Science Friday aired a show on 12/14/07 discussing national health insurance. Guests were: Uwe Reinhardt James Madison Professor of Political Economy,Princeton, New JerseyJ. Fred Ralston, Jr Chair, Health and Public PolicyCommittee American College of Physicians, Fayetteville, Tennessee Donald Berwick President and Chief Executive OfficerInstitue for Healthcare Improvement, Cambridge, Massachusetts Here is a real example (as […]

The Politics of Single-Payer Health Care

All I could say when I read Kevin Drum today on single-payer health care was “YES”: [F]or tactical political reasons, [prominent Democratic politicians] think it’s more effective to talk about incremental solutions. I disagree. …The alternative, I think, is to continue supporting improvements to the current system but to make it absolutely clear that our […]

Too Many Choices?

This Knight-Ridder piece about Bush’s Health Savings Accounts raises an interesting question: do people have too many financial choices in their life already? WASHINGTON – President Bush’s proposed expansion of Health Savings Accounts depends on a premise that research shows is questionable: that Americans want more financial choices in their lives. Experts point to a […]

Debating Single-Payer Health Insurance

Mark Thoma and Andrew Samwick discuss problems with and potential solutions for the social safety net in this week’s WSJ Econoblog. They cover several important points, but following up on some posts from last week, let me highlight their discussion of the pros and cons of a single-payer health insurance system. Mark Thoma argues that […]