Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Actuary projects Medicare costs up to 75 years in the future. How much of your taxable income will be going to pay for Medicare in the next 10, 25, or 75 years? Take a look at this chart. By 2085, 12.24% of your taxable income will need to…
A Health Reform Bill passed in the House despite declining support among the American people. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a nice summary of what is included in the bill. Today, I will review who wins and who loses from different aspects of the bill. Individual Mandate. Winners: High cost individuals. Premiums (may) decline if…
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. Medical boards independent from state government discipline doctors more frequently. Daylight-savings causes heart attacks? Press coverage of illegal drugs. H1N1 Shortages, except for Wall Street and Canadian hockey players.
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have a nice list of the Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper. However, these tips can be used for almost any type of non-fiction writing. Some of my favorites include: Rule #1: You will probably not have a Nobel Prize winning idea. Theorem #1: It is…
Most economists begin to learn about health insurance market with the classic models developed by Rothschild and Stiglitz. In these models, individual risk and characteristics are measured along a single dimension. Insurance contracts pay a lump sum amount in the case of a loss. In the real world of health insurance, however, things are more…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Wise Bread.
Today we will discuss how the tax code affects health care. Tax exemption of employer-provided health insurance. “In 1943, the Internal Revenue Service (ruled) that employees could exclude the value of employer-paid health insurance premiums from their taxable income. In 1954, Congress excluded by statute the value of employer-purchase health insurance from gross income.” To…
Cost of Health Reform: $894 billion or 1.3 trillion? Why is health care so expensive? Prices. Should urban or rural hospitals get Medicare funds? The efficiency of replacing earnings-related contributions by per-capita health premia in Germany. Start-up costs for health insurance co-operatives: $1.7 billion to $45.6 billion.
The largest provider of medical services in the United States is Medicare. Forty five million Americans receive Medicare. Out of this total only 85% are elderly (aged 65 or older). Disabled individuals, individuals with end-stage renal disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease are also eligible for Medicare coverage. Medicare has 4 parts. Part A provides coverage…
The Wall Street Journal has a revealing article concerning why the production of H1N1 vaccines has moved at such a slow pace. The reasons include: Foregoing additives. The green movement doesn’t like additives in anything, but removing additives–called adjuvants–from vaccines has a cost. “An adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine being used in Europe contains 3.75 micrograms of…