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

Healthcare in the United States

Dean Baker discussing healthcare costs in the United States. Not something we have not heard before. In this case, Dean is adding a lot more detail to explain the issues. The PPACA is also known as the ACA. It is most commonly known as Obamacare. That is so as to assign blame for any shortcomings […]

Biden finalizes rule opening up Obamacare to DACA recipients

by Megan Messerly One more ACA rule was finalized by Biden today. Not something huge in numbers; but something which will impact a few thousand people. People who were allowed to stay in the US or under a program called.  Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. A coalition of states, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, […]

Millions of People Could Benefit from Obamacare

Millions of People Who Could Benefit from Obamacare Don’t Because They Don’t Know About It, and Neither Does the New York Times Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker. I and others have written about the PPACA multiple times over since it came out and has been improved repeatedly since its introduction. Lets start […]

Changes in Healthcare Costs

I had a post the other day trying to make sense of changes in healthcare costs. Based on some of the comments to that post, a bit more thought, some data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the CPI-All Urban Consumers, I think my point distills down to this graph: (click to embiggen) The […]

Healthcare Costs – I Got Confused by Some Graphs

I don’t follow healthcare as much as others at this blog. I started playing around with some graphs at FRED and got a bit confused. I don’t mind being confused, but I like to clear up that confusion eventually. So perhaps someone can tell me what’s going on. First, this graph of healthcare expenditures / […]

Risk Corridor, Healthcare Premiums, Companies Leaving the Exchanges, and Republicans

The Washington Post story “Rubio’s inaccurate claim that he ‘inserted’ a provision restricting Obamacare ‘bailout’ funds” is about a year old. Its relevance to the PPACA is in depicting how the Republicans undermined the PPACA causing many Co-ops to go bankrupt, insurance companies to leave PPACA exchanges, saddled insurance companies with $millions in debt, and […]

PPACA: United Health Care vs the Public Option

A story that is getting some traction, though mostly lost against the New York primary, is that for profit health insurance company United Health Care is looking to drop its Exchange Plans under PPACA. For example this from Fox: UnitedHealth pulls back on ObamaCare exchanges amid huge losses This is of course presented as some […]