Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
underfunded liabilities for city worker health care costs. Brookings reports: Like most American cities, Boston has promised to pay most of the health care premiums for its employees after they retire — which can be as early as age 45 or 50. Boston also subsidizes the Medicare premiums of its retired employees after age 65.…
A recent paper by Hai Zhong (2011) finds that health insurance that provides immediate reimbursement for health care services significantly increases the likelihood of patients seeking outpatient treatment in China compared to reimbursement beneficiaries with a delay. China isn’t the only country where insurance companies provide delayed reimbursement. In fact, in France patients pay the full cost…
The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports: “Since the dust settled and dispersed a decade ago, thousands of first responders have been diagnosed with pulmonary, respiratory, skin and blood disorders, as well as cancer. Hundreds have died, according to New York City officials and other groups, although not all of the deaths have been linked directly to…
Today, I will review Brazil’s health care system. According to the Economist: “Created in 1989 from the merger of two state systems, one for those in formal work and the other for everyone else, it is exceptional in Latin America, which by and large continues with the two-tier public system Brazil abandoned. The 1988 constitution…
In 2008, 38 percent of the federal government’s revenue was spent on health care. In 2009, however, this figure jumped to 54 percent of total revenues. Although federal health spending only increased by 17.9%, a decline in revenues of a similar magnitude caused this large change. Surprisingly, state and local spending on healthcare barely budged. In…
A recent article in The New Republic examines some of the cunundrums facing today’s health care system. Most significantly, the article mentions that “In the war against disease, we have unwittingly created a kind of medicine that is barely affordable now and forbiddingly unaffordable in the long run.” The article offers a few suggestions of how…
Highlights from The Economist’s article on Health Care in India: India spends only about 5% of GDP in medical care. Of this spending only one fifth is public spending. With an overwhelmed public sector, relatively low levels of insurance, a premium is put on frugal innovation. Fortis, a hospital chain in New Delhi, elects to…