Improving Medicare Coverage Act – H.R. 5165 Medicare – Improving Medicare Coverage Act; H,R, 5165, September 3, 2021 130+ House Democrats are co-sponsoring a bill by Pramila Jayapal, the Improving Medicare Coverage Act. The impact of which would drop the Medicare eligibility age to 60 years of age. All well and good, it is about time […]
President Biden’s temporary ARPA Improves ACA Subsidies through 2022. xpostfactoid: Will 60-64 year-olds have a choice between Medicare and Obamacare? What will that look like?, ARP puts more ‘affordable’ in the Affordable Care Act | healthinsurance.org and How the American Rescue Plan Act will boost marketplace premium subsidies | healthinsurance.org If you have not been […]
Everybody talks about Medicare, Medicare4All, Medicare Advantage. Few talk about costs or what Medicare consists of for those who qualify for it. How can someone be in favor of Medicare4All, if you do not understand what regular Medicare consists and what it costs. I am guessing most people believe it would be free. What if […]
Why Hospitals and Health Insurers Didn’t Want You to See Their Prices – The New York Times (nytimes.com) Sarah Kliff and Josh Katz Some Background Tipping the balance to single payer? I believe Kliff and Tucker article in the NYT Times on hospitals and insurance helps to tip the balance. It is revealing to see […]
Accountable Care Organizations don’t cut costs. It’s time to stop the managed care experiment, STAT, Kip Sullivan and James G. Kahn August 23, 2021 Kip Sullivan is a member of the advisory board of Health Care for All Minnesota. James G. Kahn is emeritus professor of health policy at the University of California San Francisco. For the last […]
Why the hell would I go back to 2019 and cite a Nancy Altman complaint about Trump’s Executive Order? Some Introduction There were already issues with Medicare Advantage in $billions of over charges as Ms. Altman cites in her commentary. Secondly, Medicare Advantage is not “single payer” like Medicare (even without creating hospital budgets, setting […]
This was always the plan? The plan did not include forcing people out of traditional Medicare and into Medicare Advantage. No mistake on the date on this Copied and Pasted Angry Bear post from almost two years ago. Nancy Alt, Andrew Sprung, and Angry Bear were sounding the alarm in 2019 about trump’s move to […]
VA-Like Negotiations on Insulin Prices Could Save Medicare Billions, MedPage Today, Zeena Nackerdien, February 21, 2020 I am going to dispense with the reasoning dissing the increased pricing of Insulin and go straight to a pricing strategy. Suffice it to say, the various versions developed of Insulin do not justify the pricing increases seen today. […]
The HuffPo has reported on a minor dust-up between Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the politics of Medicare for All (see here, here, here, also Paul Waldman here). The tl;dr summary is that AOC suggested that it is good politics for Sanders to insist on MFA, because this will give him more leverage in […]
I have suggested (here and here) that idealism is leading progressives astray. Idealism leads progressives to ignore the political opposition that their proposals will encounter, and the need to win over reluctant allies through policy design, messaging, and – yes – compromise. A clear example of the pitfalls of progressive idealism is provided by the […]