Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Economist Tsung-Mei Cheng has developed three Universal Laws of Health Care Systems. These are: No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it. No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue it is not enough. The last reform always failed. Source: The…
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…
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…
Public-Private partnerships (PPP) are becoming increasingly popular. In Europe, the annual value of PPP is 22.9 billion Euros. In the United States, where until recently PPPs played a smaller role than in many European countries, financing of transportation infrastructure via PPPs increased almost tenfold, on an annual basis, between 2006-2008 and the preceding decade (1996-2005).…
The lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is touting a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showing that health reform would increase premiums significantly. The findings claim that insurance premiums would rise between “26 percent between 2009 and 2013 under the current system and by 40 percent during this same period” if these four health reform provisions…
Many people have asked me, what do you think about the Baucus health reform plan? Taking the bird’s eye view, the Baucus plan does a very good job at expanding insurance coverage. Eligibility limits for public plans (i.e., Medicaid and SCHIP) are more generous. Lower middle class and middle class individuals qualify for health insurance…
What is Max Baucus proposing in his inital health reform bill? Most of the principles are based on the Senate Finance Committee 2009 white paper. Below Creation of a Health Insurance Exchange. Insurers participating in the exchange could would be precluded from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. Expand Medicaid to all individuals below 133% of…
In 2009, President Barack Obama addressed the nation calling for healthcare reform. In 1974, President Richard Nixon also addressed the nation calling for healthcare reform. Let us analyze Nixon’s speech and compare it to Obama’s. “Today the need [for reform] is even more pressing because of the higher costs of medical care.” Obama echoes this…
Today, I will review the Republican Response to President Obama’s health care reform speech. To sum up, Republicans propse: malpractice reform (likely damage caps) allowing individuals to buy health insurance across state lines, allowing small businesses and individuals to pool together (not the same as creating a health insurance exchange), refundable tax credits for low-…
Today, President Obama made a speech calling for healthcare reform. To sum up, Obama is proposing: creating a health insurance exchange, an individual mandate, guaranteed renewability of health insurance, subsidies for individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance, and public option/co-op. Below are some highlights from the speech [with my comments in brackets]. So tonight,…