Bloggers are looking at a scheduled reduction in Medicare payments for docs, new reports on the “Trumans” scale, the CBO and “stupid consumer tricks.”
Heritage’s Brian Darling is unhappy about reports that Democratic lawmakers are looking to pass legislation halting reductions in Medicare payments to physicians separately from a health overhaul bill. Darling writes, “The version of “Doc Fix” was originally part of the Obamacare plan and the secret negotiators wanted to take $247 billion off the books of President Obama’s heath care legislation. The left would like to pass this bill, with or without offsets, so they can buy support for a public plan from a group, and a lobbying interest, that has opposed a government takeover of health care and the creation of a public plan.”
James Capretta on the New Atlantis argues that the call to fix the scheduled fee reductions “is a prime example of how the kind of health-care central planning at the heart of Obamacare will inevitably run amok. Medicare administrators have been trying for two decades to use bureaucratically-devised payment schemes like the [sustainable growth rate] to keep total physician spending in line with overall growth of the economy.”
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn is back with his “Truman Scale,” which rates congressional health overhaul plans on metrics of security, cost and quality. Today he takes a look at the plan passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee plan and gives it 6.8 “Trumans” compared to the Finance Committee’s 6.1
And Insure Blog’s Henry Stern looks at reports that employers are offering their employees high deductible health plans, but also providing “first dollar coverage” to help defray some of the initial costs paid by the employee as part of the deductible. Stern labels it “stupid consumer tricks.”
TPMDC’s Brian Beutler reports that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has a plan to woo conservative Democrats in the House: “The ideal scenario is a House bill that’s cheaper in absolute terms than the final Senate bill, without gutting subsidies. But at the very least the House bill will cover more people than the Senate bill, at a comparable price, providing the government more bang for its health care buck.”
The Incidental Economist’s Austin Frakt says health reform is about “real people, real needs” and highlights his new paper in the journal Health Affairs: “In particular the study reveals that low-income people with chronic health conditions or disabilities can have outrageously high uninsurance rates, nearly 50% if they live in the south and do not qualify for public health programs.”
The New Health Dialogue’s Allison Levy takes a closer look at the Congressional Budget Office’s Phil Levy, who was profiled by the Washington Post this weekend.
And Cato’s Michael Cannon posts a video from a Cato event with David Goldhill, who authored an article titled, “How American Health Care Killed My Father.”
