In a recent health policy viewpoint article in JAMA, Drs. Don Berwick and Rick Gilfillan noted that, although the CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has done some good during its ten+ years of existence, it has failed to “become the engine that it could be for transforming the nation’s health care finance
Paul Krugman recently wrote an article in the New York Times posing the question: if repealing Obamacare is off the table (for now), should people on the “progressive” end of the political spectrum push for a single-payer “Medicare for all” system or just advocate for incremental improvements to the privatized Obamacare model? He says if
In my last post, I noted that Congress was eager to repeal Obamacare, but lacked consensus on a replacement. I noted that Obamacare was designed to cover the sick people and keep premiums affordable through the individual mandate and subsidies. These two provisions of Obamacare can be reversed through legislative mechanisms that avoid filibusters. But, removing
Congress and the president-elect are enthusiastic about repealing Obamacare, but have not yet achieved any consensus about what to replace it with. High risk pools figure prominently in various proposals, including Ryan’s “A Better Way” proposal. But high risk pools are not a new idea. Thirty five states had them in the years before Obamacare,
Are high risk pools really a good replacement for Obamacare architecture? Read More »
This morning, the United States Supreme Court made its landmark decision to uphold the health care reform law. I am very happy about it for a number of reasons: I won a $1 bet. As I described in a previous post, I bet my brother-in-law, an attorney from Chicago, that the law will be
In a recent blog post, I attempted to summarize the legal arguments behind the debate about the constitutionality of the health care reform law — as well as I can without the benefit of having any legal education. Reading the transcript of the testimony to the Supreme Court, and reading some of the news coverage
I enjoy a good wager. But, my maximum bet, no matter how consequential the topic, is $1. This weekend, I bet my attorney brother-in-law my maximum bet that the Supreme Court would uphold the health care reform law. He argued that it was clearly unconstitutional, and reminded me of high school civics lessons about federalism.
Health care reform with its foot on a banana peel Read More »
