Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe by Email
CMS last night released 2011 data on the charges and payments for the 50 most common hospital discharges for every hospital in the USA (Aaron McKethan put me onto this via twitter @A_McKethan). A quick primer and then selected comparisons for UNC, Duke and Wake Med hospitals. Charges are a fantasy amount that no third [...]
Author Archive
May 3rd, 2013
Category: Affordable Care Act, Health Care
On December 16, 2010 I wrote a post that began: While the rhetoric around health reform has been incendiary from day one, in policy terms, a compromise between Democrats and Republicans using the outline of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has always been available. The two primary problems with the health care system are costs [...]
May 1st, 2013
Category: Medicaid
A new study today on the Oregon Medicaid experiment (they randomly selected some who applied for coverage while denying others; the difference in the groups is the estimated impact of having Medicaid v. being uninsured in Portland, Oregon; they data reported are only from Portland, and not statewide). Such a study design is as good [...]
May 1st, 2013
Category: Medicaid
Managed care companies are cherry picking the healthiest disabled senior dual eligible beneficiaries in New York state using a variety of methods, and excluding those needing the most care. The program provides a monthly per capita payment amount ($3,800/month) regardless of how much care is provided. The general theory is that the insurer has an [...]
April 26th, 2013
Category: Health Care
About 18 months ago I shared the news that my family was moving to another house so that my mother in law could move in with us. This move took place about 16 months ago, my mother-in-law’s house sold about a year ago and she moved into our new house last Summer. Her physical and [...]
April 16th, 2013
Category: Culture & Civil Society, Terrorism and its control
Obviously a terrible tragedy yesterday in Boston. It is all the more sinister because of what the finish line of a Marathon typically represents: a supportive, celebratory place of individual achievement. I have finished two Marathons in my life, the 2004 Richmond and 2005 Marine Corps races. For me, these races were culminations of my [...]
February 27th, 2013
Category: Affordable Care Act
The premise of my book Balancing the Budget is a Progressive Priority is that the most important long run budget issue is developing a set of health care cost controls that we will actually try. I frame a set of policies that I claim represent what a political deal between Democrats and Republicans would look [...]
February 21st, 2013
Category: Affordable Care Act
Aaron Carroll was pushing back on Avik Roy and Doug Holtz-Eakin invoking Switzerland as a model to reform the ACA by noting (correctly in my Professor who teaches comparative health systems at Duke view) that Switzerland is more regulated and controlled than is the ACA in many ways. Austin Frakt was noting that most posts [...]
February 20th, 2013
Category: Affordable Care Act
I said yesterday that the key to evaluating Bowles-Simpson 2.0 was its stance on the Affordable Care Act. Their initial report (lets say Bowles-Simpson 1.0; release Dec. 2010) assumed full implementation of the ACA, and did not suggest an increase in the Medicare age. Most writing on version 2.0 has focused on the shift from [...]
February 19th, 2013
Category: Affordable Care Act
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson announced their intention to develop a version 2.0 of their grand bargain plan to reduce the deficit by $2.4 Trillion beyond the $2.7 Trillion in reductions enacted since the initial Fiscal Commission plan was released in December 2010. Their goal is to stabilize the debt-to-GDP at 70% or lower per [...]