Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
Monday Links: Economists solve an age-old economics problem: toilet seat up or down? Is Sweden is more capitalist than the U.S.? Is $100 million proton beam radiation therapy technology worth the money? Anti-depressants reduce crime? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. He needs to review the many resources available at the Holocaust Education Resource Center‘s new website.…
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…
“A lot of people think government action saved capitalism. It didn’t. Capitalism saved capitalism. A lot of people think the government didn’t have any plans with regard to Lehman Brothers. It did. The plans just didn’t work.” Tom Junod “The Deal of the Century” Esquire.
Some links for you to enjoy over the weekend. The public plan will cost the same as private plans. How to get your economics article published? Make it complicated. How much does your healthcare reform bill cost? Opening the Health Insurance Exchange to all. Measuring (healthcare) consumer confidence. President Obama promised to make it illegal for…
The Medicare Reimbursement series continues with a look at physician reimbursement in more detail. The source of this information is MedPAC’s Payment Basics. Physician Reimbursement Physicians payment is based on 3 factors: RVU, GPCI and the MEI conversion factor. Relative value units (RVUs) measure the relative costliness of three types of resources used to provide…
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at Healthcare Technology News. This is a great source for commentary about Obama’s speech last week.
The Medicare Reimbursement series continues with the big money payments: acute inpatient hospital care, long-term care facilities and critical access hospitals. The sources of this information is MedPAC’s Payment Basics. Hospital Acute Inpatient Services Payments made under the acute inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) totaled $105 billion and accounted for about 25 percent of Medicare…
Ben Bernanke declared today that “From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point.” What has made him make this declaration. If he using the stockmarket as an indication, the recession may be over. Stocks are still down 30% from the beginning of the year in 2008. However, the S&P 500…
The Scotland Sun reports that the Scottish NHS paid £23 million ($40 million) to patients for subpar care. Is this due to the inherently substandard quality of care in a single-payer system? The answer is likely no. This figure only amounts to about £4.50 ($7.34) for every person in Scotland however. Drug-related errors in the…