Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
House Democrats have agreed to a health reform bill in the house, but one that would exempt small businesses from having to provide health insurance. The L.A. Times reports that “The House bill originally exempted small businesses with payrolls of less than $250,000 from the penalty. Under the new proposal, businesses with payrolls of less…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Insurance Copywriter.
Conventional Wisdom: I can’t believe it! Obese individuals are causing the collapse of our healthcare system. According to a report I saw in the AP, obese individuals cost us $1400 more per year in additional medical costs. Let’s get them on the biggest loser and save our health care system! The question is, does obesity…
A paper by Boccuti and Moon (2003) believes it has. Annual per enrollee cost growth between 1970 and 2000 was 11.1% for private insurers, but only 9.7% for Medicare. Why is this? While cost growth between for Medicare and private insurance very similar for hospital services, private health insurance has had much steeper cost growth…
This past week, Marketplace has had a great series of posts on health care. These include: Could we solve the healthcare crisis by convincing all hospitals to behave like the Cleveland Clinic? David Goodman of Dartmouth says “If many of these high-cost hospitals started practicing like the Cleveland clinic today, next year they would look…
California is known for beautiful beaches, Hollywood, and sublime parks. In this post, however, I will discuss two other things for which California has recently become famous. Marijuana. Here in California, medical marijuana is legal. Based on my unscientific of pedestrians on a variety of U.S. regions, northern California also has the most lax…
President Obama says: “If you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it.” “You will pay less.” “Quality will improve.” Michael Tanner says: You can’t buy any insurance, only “insurance that includes all the benefits government thinks you should have.” Further, the government plan may dominate the market because the public plan “would be…
The U.S. is currently involved with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its longest running entanglement is its war on drugs. Marketplace reports that “the war on drugs, though, has been going on for four decades. Forty years ago today President Nixon asked Congress to create a national anti-drug policy. It became the war on…
The Atlantic discusses the possibility of organ sales and organ chains. This is something I have advocated for here, here and here.
State Governments want to mandate that yoga instructors get licensed.