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This week, President Obama made Harvard Professor Dr. Donald M. Berwick a recess appointee to run Medicare and Medicaid. Based upon his public statements, Dr. Berwick seems very much in line with Obama’s belief in the benefits of “spreading the wealth around.” During a speech in England in which he praised the British national health care [...] Back in March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the new health legislation would reduce the federal budget deficit by about $140 billion over the next ten years and by about 0.5% of gross domestic product in the decade after that. Ever since, analysts have been debating whether we should believe those estimates. Some [...] By VINCE KURAITIS JD, MBA and DAVID C. KIBBE MD, MBA ….or to be more specific, HITECH is synergistic with payment reform that could come from the recently passed national health care reform legislation — the Patient Protection and Affordable… By MAGGIE MAHAR This is the first in a series of posts that will try to pierce the myths and reveal the facts about the reform legislation. This first post focuses on the impact that reform will have on the… The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee (or, HELP) reported details of its proposed health care reform legislation this week. The details included specifics on the employer mandate included… Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) is floating the following trial balloon: Congress would fund part of health reform with a cap on the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance but only at a level “significantly above” the cost of the standard plan offered to federal employees. The measure would also exclude policies bargained [...] Until now, unions have been among the strongest critics of paying for health reform by limiting the tax exclusion for employer sponsored insurance. But on Monday, a well-connected labor lobbyist told me a deal could be done. “It all depends,” he said, “on what the cap looks like.” Remarkably, in just a few weeks, lawmakers seem to [...] It’s looking more and more likely that federal health reform will look very similar to what’s going on in Massachusetts. As I’ve written in the past, expanding coverage is easy, controlling costs is not. And Massachusetts has taken the route of least political resistance and did the former. I’ve written previously that expanding coverage without re-aligning [...] President Obama appears to be ever-so-slowly backing away from his hard-edged campaign opposition to capping the $246 billion employer-sponsored insurance tax exclusion as a way to help pay for health reform. It’s the typical Washington dance. First, on June 2, the President met privately with two dozen Senate Democrats to talk about health reform. Senate [...] Despite the poor shape of the American health system, public preference is the limiting factor in how far we can change the system. Ezra Klein notes the lessons learned from 1994, saying that there is a status-quo bias, and that people “want more options,” and “don’t want to be forced out of their current arrangements.” This is [...] |
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