Posted in Healthcare on Feb 13th, 2011
Today I finally read the actual text of the Op-Ed piece by Laurence H. Tribe in the New York Times. As part of his justification for the Individual Mandate he actually makes the case that the health care law is little different from Social Security. Based on this association it is very small step for [...]
Posted in Healthcare on Feb 13th, 2011
A recent study by Hadley and others, which used that analytic approach, examined a sample of medical claims for uninsured individuals and projected that they would receive about $28 billion in uncompensated care in 2008. That study also examined reports by doctors and hospitals and derived a higher estimate: Their gross costs of providing [...]
Posted in Healthcare on Feb 7th, 2011
My actual health care costs outside of health insurance and dental for the last ten years is around $200. For my adult working life, thirty years, the cost is not much more. It stands to reason that I have been a very, very profitable customer for the insurance companies when they could have me. Considering [...]
Posted in Healthcare, Politics on Feb 2nd, 2011
I was wondering when someone would do something like this. I think many states will opt to not expand state Medicaid programs due to lack of funds. When it comes to laying off police officers or cutting Medicaid, Medicaid loses. The Individual Mandate and the federal mandate to determine what qualifies as an ‘acceptable’ health-insurance [...]
Posted in Healthcare, Journalism, Things that make me go hmm... on Feb 1st, 2011
Last night my wife and I were discussing the decision by a judge in Florida that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional. My wife thought he ruled that only the Individual Mandate was overturned while I maintained that the entire bill was being overturned since there was no severability clause. Since it was dinner time [...]
Posted in Healthcare on Jan 17th, 2011
If we continue my line of reasoning in “Is the individual mandate necessary for health care reform?” to its logical conclusion, the individual mandate does not have either a positive or negative impact on health care costs. Whether the mandate is at the state or national level, it appears to be a freedom we have [...]
Posted in Healthcare on Jan 15th, 2011
Most of the recent debate about the individual mandate centers around the constitutionality of the mandate. A more interesting question is whether the mandate works. The answer to this question is different if you are an economist or an average person. The economist or policy maker will be happy if the mandate causes: to cause [...]
Posted in Healthcare, Politics on Jan 2nd, 2011
My biggest complaint with this new restriction on Health Savings Accounts is that it is a blatant attempt to make Health Savings Accounts less desirable by arbitrarily removing benefits. The combination of Health Savings Accounts with a high deductible health insurance represent a low cost competitor to ObamaCare. The primary political objective of ObamaCare was to limit health care alternatives and force everyone into one common but high cost comprehensive health care plan. The key to building support for the high cost health care plan is to hide the costs of the comprehensive plan and make the low cost plans less attractive. The government health plan had to be comprehensive to be acceptable to unions and large corporations. High health care costs have made some businesses uncompetitive and one solution is transfer their health care responsibilities to the government. Under this scenario control of the health care system is the primary objective. Controlling spiraling health care costs is a secondary consideration. Once control of the health care system is attained, then the government could force lower prices at will. It is hoped that the health care czars will be smart, benevolent dictators. The downside is that the proposed health care system could be an inefficient bureaucracy like Medicare or something much worse. Currently this particular scenario has such a dim political future that many large organizations have asked for exemptions from ObamaCare. With this deadly embrace of the status quo, the owners of these luxury health care plans having particularly dim future at controlling their spiraling health care costs and ultimately their product costs. If an individual believes that a low cost plan health plan is better for them, why should they be forced to bail out the high cost plans of unions and big businesses?
Posted in Healthcare, Politics on Dec 27th, 2010
One of the more interesting gambits that played out in the health care debate was the ardent support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) by unions and large companies. Despite the fact that these organizations are particularly at risk from rising health care costs, the focus of the debate centered around the [...]
Posted in Healthcare, Politics on Dec 18th, 2010
While Congress and most of the nation was caught in the melodrama of whether or not to extend the tax cuts this week, another drama was playing out. Politifact chose to announce, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’, at the same time Judge Roger Vinson was hearing the case just [...]
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