John R. Graham
Commentary
Cost Containment That Relies on Less Government Power, Not More
On January 20, New York Times quoted President Obama, trying to rescue his health bill, stressing the need for some kind of cost containment because if we dont, then our budgets are going to blow up
Ironically, if the President had read an adjourning article in the same newspaper he ...
Commentary
What Health Reformers Could Learn from the Market for Cosmetic Surgery
The article describes Board-certified surgeons populating a website, onto which prospective patients upload photos of body parts which they believe would benefit from surgery. Surgeons nationwide reply with explanations of procedures and price estimates. If patients then decide to proceed, they travel to the surgeons office for a consultation and, ...
Commentary
Forget the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’: Senate Medicaid Deal a Recipe for Fraud
The Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) is the federal financing formula that encourages each state to spend its own taxpayers money irresponsibly in order to maximize its take from other states. For example, Californias FMAP was traditionally the 50 percent minimum: For every dollar California spent, the U.S. Treasury would ...
Health Care
The Rich Get Richer: The Senate’s Medicaid Proposal Gives a Bigger Bailout to Wealthier States
Imagine that you were inspecting a swimming pool that was cracked and leaking water, such that anyone who dove into it would be at risk of cracking his head on the bottom. You would likely make it a priority to fix the pool. However, if the pool were on a ...
Commentary
From Health ‘Reform’ to Government-Retiree Bailout
The tax is now going to hit plans that cost $8,900 for an individual and $24,000 for a family, which is way higher than the current cost of employer-based health benefits. Until recently, state and local government employers did not have to report retiree health obligations on their balance sheets ...
Commentary
More Medicare Patients Dropped
The first two we’ve known about for some time. However, “unfunded liabilities” are not an issue folks discuss at the kitchen-table. The cost shift, which is actually a hidden tax that the government levies on the privately insured, is opaque enough that ordinary citizens are unable to discover it. The ...
California
Would You Like a California Cash Cow or New York Pork With Your Florida Flim Flam?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reckons that 15 million more people will enroll in Medicaid if the Senate bill becomes law (p. 8), which is just a whisker less than half the total number of persons the CBO forecasts will be newly insured, 31 million, as a result of the ...
Commentary
Medicare for All or Medicare for None?
The primary cause of the Mayo Clinic’s dropping Medicare is its fees, which are too low for physicians to pay the rent. Some have argued that the physicians have been “crying wolf” on this for years. Well, the wolf is at the door, as I wrote in a recent study ...
Commentary
Cadillac Health Plans; And Taxation Thereof
And I don’t just mean the HuffingtonPost/DailyKos/MoveOn.org crowd. There’s even a sense at the New York Times that the President’s faction has failed to grab history by the tail. Witness this column by Bob Herbert, who protests the tax on so-called “Cadillac health plans,” those which cost more than $23,000 ...
Commentary
Sen. Bill Nelson’s Florida Flim Flam
Medicare Advantage allows seniors to use private insurers to give Medicare benefits. While far from perfect, Medicare Advantage has significant advantages over the traditional, government-monopoly model of Medicare, as I have recently examined. Heres an interesting notion: If Medicare Advantage provides superior benefits to traditional Medicare benefits, then the Florida ...
Cost Containment That Relies on Less Government Power, Not More
On January 20, New York Times quoted President Obama, trying to rescue his health bill, stressing the need for some kind of cost containment because if we dont, then our budgets are going to blow up
Ironically, if the President had read an adjourning article in the same newspaper he ...
What Health Reformers Could Learn from the Market for Cosmetic Surgery
The article describes Board-certified surgeons populating a website, onto which prospective patients upload photos of body parts which they believe would benefit from surgery. Surgeons nationwide reply with explanations of procedures and price estimates. If patients then decide to proceed, they travel to the surgeons office for a consultation and, ...
Forget the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’: Senate Medicaid Deal a Recipe for Fraud
The Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) is the federal financing formula that encourages each state to spend its own taxpayers money irresponsibly in order to maximize its take from other states. For example, Californias FMAP was traditionally the 50 percent minimum: For every dollar California spent, the U.S. Treasury would ...
The Rich Get Richer: The Senate’s Medicaid Proposal Gives a Bigger Bailout to Wealthier States
Imagine that you were inspecting a swimming pool that was cracked and leaking water, such that anyone who dove into it would be at risk of cracking his head on the bottom. You would likely make it a priority to fix the pool. However, if the pool were on a ...
From Health ‘Reform’ to Government-Retiree Bailout
The tax is now going to hit plans that cost $8,900 for an individual and $24,000 for a family, which is way higher than the current cost of employer-based health benefits. Until recently, state and local government employers did not have to report retiree health obligations on their balance sheets ...
More Medicare Patients Dropped
The first two we’ve known about for some time. However, “unfunded liabilities” are not an issue folks discuss at the kitchen-table. The cost shift, which is actually a hidden tax that the government levies on the privately insured, is opaque enough that ordinary citizens are unable to discover it. The ...
Would You Like a California Cash Cow or New York Pork With Your Florida Flim Flam?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reckons that 15 million more people will enroll in Medicaid if the Senate bill becomes law (p. 8), which is just a whisker less than half the total number of persons the CBO forecasts will be newly insured, 31 million, as a result of the ...
Medicare for All or Medicare for None?
The primary cause of the Mayo Clinic’s dropping Medicare is its fees, which are too low for physicians to pay the rent. Some have argued that the physicians have been “crying wolf” on this for years. Well, the wolf is at the door, as I wrote in a recent study ...
Cadillac Health Plans; And Taxation Thereof
And I don’t just mean the HuffingtonPost/DailyKos/MoveOn.org crowd. There’s even a sense at the New York Times that the President’s faction has failed to grab history by the tail. Witness this column by Bob Herbert, who protests the tax on so-called “Cadillac health plans,” those which cost more than $23,000 ...
Sen. Bill Nelson’s Florida Flim Flam
Medicare Advantage allows seniors to use private insurers to give Medicare benefits. While far from perfect, Medicare Advantage has significant advantages over the traditional, government-monopoly model of Medicare, as I have recently examined. Heres an interesting notion: If Medicare Advantage provides superior benefits to traditional Medicare benefits, then the Florida ...
