Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Tonight, President Donald Trump delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. Although the speech touched on a number of topics, I give my line-by-line commentary on the portions of the speech related to health care. “Tonight, I am also calling on this Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare with reforms that expand choice,…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA)–among other things–mandated a number of reforms to the Medicare reimbursement system. For instance, the ACA created Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and bundled payment initiatives were initiatives. If Medicare started paying providers more based on quality and total cost of care across all provider settings, one would hypothesize that industry consolidation would accelerate.…
An interesting paper by Graves and Nikpay (2017) look at the evoluation of the health insurance market before and after Obamacare. The authors find We found that the ACA’s unprecedented coverage changes increased transitions to Medicaid and nongroup coverage among the uninsured, while strengthening the existing employer-sponsored insurance system and improving retention of public coverage.…
Today is the last day to sign up for Obamacare for 2017. If President Trump has his way, it could be the last day to sign up for Obamacare ever. In fact, Marketplace reports that Trump administration decided to pull ads promoting last-minute sign-ups, although it reversed that decision shortly after. The media put forth mixed estimates…
President Trump today released an Executive Order that asked the secretary of HHS to: “…exercise all authority and discretion available to them to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay” parts of the law that would place a fiscal burden on states, individuals or health-care providers. Most of the provisions in the ACA can’t just be…
Drug prices are in the spotlight of late. From Pharma bro to EpiPen price hikes to Trump’s most recent press conference high drug prices are getting a lot of attention. One solution is to have a single payer system whereby the government negotiates drug prices directly with pharmaceutical firms. Michael Cannon proposes an alternative, the 300…
From Aaron Carroll at the Incidental Economist:
Check out my interview on NPR with Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson about what recent changes in health insurance premiums changes mean for the future of the Affordable Care Act.
Health insurance premiums are projected to increase an astronomical 25% for plans in the health insurance exchanges. Some pundits claim that these increases represent that Obamacare is crumbling or in a death spiral. As premiums rise, healthy people flee the market. This leaves insurers with only more sick individuals which leads to premium increases. More…
Premiums are rising. HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell stated: Building a new market is never easy,” she told the group at HHS headquarters. “We expect this to be a transition period for the marketplace. Issuers are adjusting their prices, bringing them in line with actual data on costs.” Burwell’s comments foreshadow the higher premiums expected when…