At the root of these problems is the fact that we have a fragmented, highly inefficient system. Employed Americans younger than 65 years of age have job- based insurance, if their employer chose to provide it; the elderly and disabled are covered through Medicare; the poor by Medicaid; military veterans through the Veterans Administration; and American Indians through the Indian Health Service. Persons who do not fall into any of those categories must try to purchase individual coverage in the private market, where it is often prohibitively expensive or unobtainable if they have a pre-existing health condition.
We keep hammering on this problem: Too damn many buckets to throw people into, and too many damn people who fall between buckets, or not into any bucket at all.
Owing largely to this fragmentation and inefficiency, a staggering 31 percent of U.S. health care spending goes toward administrative costs, rather than care itself. Inefficiency exists at both the provider and payer level. To care for their patients and get paid for their work, physicians and hospitals must contend with the intricacies of numerous insurance plans—which tests and procedures they cover, which drugs are on their formularies, which providers are in their network. Meanwhile, private health insurance companies divert a considerable share of the premiums they collect toward advertising and marketing, sales teams, underwriters, lobbyists, executive salaries and shareholder profits. The top five private insurers in the United States paid out $12.2 billion in profits to investors in 2009, a year when nearly 3 million Americans lost their health coverage.
That's not a bug. It's a feature. The suffering and desperation of some make the others all the more anxious to get what they can. It's like a "Reserve Army of the Uninsured."
It's not a question of whether some individuals can "afford" care; it's a question of whether the whole country can "afford" this health care system, which ObamaCare does not change, except insofar as it loads up the system with more fragmentation and inefficiency. Read below the fold...
An unnamed FBI official has told CBS News that at least one of the explosive devices detonated in Boston yesterday appears to have been improvised from a conventional pressure-cooker. Unnamed law enforcement officials don't exactly have the strongest record of credibility in the immediate aftermath of events like these, but federal authorities are well-acquainted with this type of IED.
An unnamed FBI official has told CBS News that at least one of the explosive devices detonated in Boston yesterday appears to have been improvised from a conventional pressure-cooker. Unnamed law enforcement officials don't exactly have the strongest record of credibility in the immediate aftermath of events like these, but federal authorities are well-acquainted with this type of IED.
It almost seems like the best and maybe the only thing we can so as a society is stop creating quite so many assholes with grudges. Read below the fold...
[Adding "... and cherrypicked data!" "Evil clowns" because it's such a grotesque neo-liberal #FAIL. (I mean "fail" in terms of academic and intellectual integrity. Obviously, the paper was a tremendous success in terms of achieving desired policy outcome for its authors and the clients they serviced.) Anyhow, this post started out with one quote from Konczal and turned into a link- and quote-fest ordered by discovery, and ending with the original authors from UMass. Even though the whole topic has gone viral, I'll stick with the festival concept, so maybe stronger analysts than I am can use this as resource. --lambert]
File under Making Beppe Grillo look good! Mike Konczal:
Coding Error. As Herndon-Ash-Pollin [see below] puts it: "A coding error in the [Reinhart and Rogoff] working spreadsheet [in Growth in a Time of Debt] entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis. [Reinhart-Rogoff] averaged cells in lines 30 to 44 instead of lines 30 to 49...This spreadsheet error...is responsible for a -0.3 percentage-point error in RR's published average real GDP growth in the highest public debt/GDP category." Belgium, in particular, has 26 years with debt-to-GDP above 90 percent, with an average growth rate of 2.6 percent (though this is only counted as one total point due to the weighting above).
Being a bit of a doubting Thomas on this coding error, I wouldn't believe unless I touched the digital Excel wound myself. One of the authors was able to show me that, and here it is. You can see the Excel blue-box for formulas missing some data: Read below the fold...
Deficit spending by the government is merely the counterpart of private sector saving. What government deficit spending does is to permit the private sector to achieve its level of desired saving. When the latter changes, government spending ought to be adjusting in the opposite direction to offset it (unless the current account balance happens to do the job).
I added a link to the main menu for the blogroll, which allow you to filter by category. (I just added several health care blogs, so I wanted an easy way to check them.)
You too can easily add blogs to the blogroll and please so. On the very top menu, to the right, click Blogroll. Read below the fold...
It's exactly the same pitch he's making to elders on Social Security: "If the price of cat food gets too high, try offal." Times:
For weeks, news reports have conveyed industry warnings that the new law could lead to higher premiums for many people, because the policies to be sold under the law’s requirements will be more comprehensive than those many Americans have now. Republicans in Congress, who remain united in opposition three years after the law’s enactment, have held hearings to underscore such warnings.
But the administration says such talk is overblown. Consumers [citizens] can move from expensive health plans to more efficient, lower-cost policies, officials say, and critics who focus on premiums do not take account of other provisions of the law that limit how much consumers will spend out of pocket for health care.
The administration predicts that those who get coverage after being uninsured are generally going to be younger and healthier than those who have insurance.* That will hold down total costs of coverage for insurers and the government, officials say, and tend to** hold down premiums in turn. If premiums do increase, they argue, lower-income people can get federal help.***
Come on. "More efficient"? Everybody knows and even the Obots now admit that ObamaCare doesn't control costs. So why then is a "more efficient" plan cheaper? That's right: Read below the fold...
A follow-up: This seems inherently unfair. The monthly premium for our current health insurance plan costs $484 per month for a single 40 year old employee. A $10/hour employee (someone on our low end) who works a full year will earn about $20,800 per year. 9.5% of that is $1,976 or about $165 per month. To think that a $10 per hour employee could absorb that cost is crazy.
Health policy experts do worry about the issue that this reader raises: That low income workers will not accept the health insurance they’re offered. A report from the benefits consulting firm ADP found that, right now, most low-earning workers do not buy the health insurance benefits that they are offered.
The ADP report found that, among workers earning $15,000 to $20,000, 37 percent elected to purchase health benefits when they were made available.
“In 2014, there are going to be a number of people who are eligible for benefits for the first time,” ADP’s Christopher Ryan told me at the time. “These additional people are primarily lower-income and the critical question is: To what extent, if they have the opportunity to purchase benefits, will they participate?”
Are employees who receive employer provided health insurance eligible for subsidies if their income is below 400% of the poverty level?
No, workers who receive employer benefits—those that meet the coverage and affordability requirements discussed above—do not qualify for federal subsidies.
So, if I read this correctly -- and I'm still ramping up on this stuff -- 63% of the $10 hour workers (we call them "normal" in today's economy) will not purchase insurance if employers offer it to them, and will elect to pay the penalty instead,* at least as along as the penalties are less than the policy. Read below the fold...
An Arkansas proposal to use Medicaid money to buy private insurance for low-income residents failed in the state House.
Sixty-nine lawmakers voted for the legislation today, while 28 were opposed, short of the 75 votes needed for approval, said Cecillea Pond-Mayo, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas House of Representatives. House Speaker Davy Carter, a Republican, plans to call another vote on the measure tomorrow, she said.
Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, received informal approval on Feb. 18 from the federal government to use money for Medicaid expansion under President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul to instead buy private coverage.
Well, turning my tax dollars directly into private profit through privatization, when there is a public alternative available, does seem a little raw. Read below the fold...
The peace of a historic and festive event was shattered Monday when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people, including an 8-year-old, and injuring at least 130 more.
The near-simultaneous blasts shattered windows and sent runners and onlookers fleeing through curtains of thick gray smoke. Police and emergency personnel rushed to aid casualties lying on the blood-stained pavement.
I had an epic journey to H. & R. Block on public transportation. Strong lumpenproletariat ridership, lots of people under some sort of compliance regimen, like methadone or a court order. Some oldsters, some moms with babies in carriers. So at one point we're making our way down a service road by a medical clinic, and an elderly woman walks out into the road in front of the bus:
She walks about half a block, then turns off the road and gets into her car. The bus speeds up and pulls away onto the main road. Read below the fold...
Went out to the local hot dog place and had a Coke from the fountain, which really is better. But they were out of Coca-Cola cups, and so I had to use a smaller, non-branded cup. Free refills, yum!
Says the young lady behind the counter: "We phoned Coca-Cola, but they were out." Read below the fold...
[Police descend on apartment complex in Revere as press, obviously tipped off, reports. Then they clam up. A break in the case, or not. --lambert]
So, I've just finished my tax return at H&R Block, and I hear the receptionists talking about an explosion at the Boston Marathon V.I.P stand in Copley Square [adding: though it turns out to be right at the finish line, not a VIP stand, if there even is one.] On the taxi back I heard word that an explosion at the JFK Library had been debunked as connected, and that Logan was open but Boston was a "No Fly" zone. Also, Obama was preparing to speak. I hear of injuries but no deaths [wrong: two] and no arrests. Read below the fold...
