History of Medicare Home Health Payments

Medicare pays home health agencies (HHAs) to care for patients who cannot care for themselves in their own homes.  HHAs, however, have experienced significant changes in the way Medicare pays them over the past 30 years.  A recent paper by Huckfeldt et al. (2014) summarizes these changes: 1983: Medicare switches to an inpatient prospective payment…

Are voters like medieval doctors?

According to “In Praise of Passivity” by philosphopher Mike Huemer, the answer may be yes. Voters, activists, and political leaders of the present day are in the position of medieval doctors. They hold simple, prescientific theories about the workings of society and the causes of social problems, from which they derive a variety of remedies-almost all…