Health Care
Health Care
San Francisco’s Employer Health Tax: Change We Can Do Without
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Healthy San Francisco plan, which he claims is a model for President Obama’s “public option,” recently picked up some scholarly support. Business owners and low-income workers are not likely to find it encouraging. Effective since January 2008, San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance comprises a head tax ...
Health Care
Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss: President Obama’s Best Health “Insurance” Reforms Were Passed In 1997
The president’s goal of exerting control over Americans’ access to health care has been fighting serious headwinds. While insisting that the government would never get between “you and your doctor,” he also pointed out that the government would only pay for the “blue pill” if it had the same effect ...
Health Care
Unreality Reigns Supreme
Most of the ongoing halftime “analysis” by the journalists is beside the point. The private health insurance sector is about to be destroyed — apparently with the acquiesence of those pro-market, pro-free enterprise, pro-capitalism Republicans — with regulations mandating that pre-existing conditions not be used to deny coverage, that insurance ...
California
California Republican Legislators Hike Taxes
Republican legislators, usually steadfast against tax hikes, wobbled on this one because the 2.35% tax on health insurers’ gross revenues will replace a 5.5% tax that will expire in October. You would have thought that the fact that 59% to 66% of California’ suninsured kids are already eligible for SCHIP ...
Business & Economics
Without legal reforms, the health care system will remain broken
There’s an old joke about the boy who goes to the doctor and uses his index finger to point all over his body, explaining, “It hurts here, here, here and here.” The doctor sighs and says, “Son, your finger is broken.” This poor kid was looking for his ailment in ...
Commentary
The line forms to the left: Waiting for care under health reform
Waiting for care under health reform proposal Will waiting lines at doctors’ offices, labs and hospitals get longer if President Barack Obama’s vision of health care reform becomes a reality? And who will decide if a patient is eligible for a treatment or procedure? It will probably come as no ...
Commentary
Obama in Fantasyland
This is remarkable. As everyone in Washington knows, there are no savings to be had. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services projects that, at the current trajectory, the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund will become insolvent by 2017. The baby boomers are about to start retiring. Medicare is headed for ...
Health Care
Krugman Speaks!
And then there is the grand finale, the intellectual coup de grace, the crowning glory of KrugmanThink: “Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as ...
Commentary
Space needs to answer some questions
Where in the world is Zack Space? He’s hiding under the bed. He’s seen the town hall meetings on the news, and he’s afraid one of us un-American, swastika-bearing mobsters will get upset with him about ObamaCare. “That’s not my style,” he says. Poor baby. I’m sure he’ll have the ...
Commentary
Sticker Shock May Erode Public Support for Health Care Overhaul
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s draft health care bill may be in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own price tag, as “sticker shock” could cause what support there is for the government-centric health care transformation to ebb considerably. “Americans are by and large in ...
San Francisco’s Employer Health Tax: Change We Can Do Without
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Healthy San Francisco plan, which he claims is a model for President Obama’s “public option,” recently picked up some scholarly support. Business owners and low-income workers are not likely to find it encouraging. Effective since January 2008, San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance comprises a head tax ...
Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss: President Obama’s Best Health “Insurance” Reforms Were Passed In 1997
The president’s goal of exerting control over Americans’ access to health care has been fighting serious headwinds. While insisting that the government would never get between “you and your doctor,” he also pointed out that the government would only pay for the “blue pill” if it had the same effect ...
Unreality Reigns Supreme
Most of the ongoing halftime “analysis” by the journalists is beside the point. The private health insurance sector is about to be destroyed — apparently with the acquiesence of those pro-market, pro-free enterprise, pro-capitalism Republicans — with regulations mandating that pre-existing conditions not be used to deny coverage, that insurance ...
California Republican Legislators Hike Taxes
Republican legislators, usually steadfast against tax hikes, wobbled on this one because the 2.35% tax on health insurers’ gross revenues will replace a 5.5% tax that will expire in October. You would have thought that the fact that 59% to 66% of California’ suninsured kids are already eligible for SCHIP ...
Without legal reforms, the health care system will remain broken
There’s an old joke about the boy who goes to the doctor and uses his index finger to point all over his body, explaining, “It hurts here, here, here and here.” The doctor sighs and says, “Son, your finger is broken.” This poor kid was looking for his ailment in ...
The line forms to the left: Waiting for care under health reform
Waiting for care under health reform proposal Will waiting lines at doctors’ offices, labs and hospitals get longer if President Barack Obama’s vision of health care reform becomes a reality? And who will decide if a patient is eligible for a treatment or procedure? It will probably come as no ...
Obama in Fantasyland
This is remarkable. As everyone in Washington knows, there are no savings to be had. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services projects that, at the current trajectory, the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund will become insolvent by 2017. The baby boomers are about to start retiring. Medicare is headed for ...
Krugman Speaks!
And then there is the grand finale, the intellectual coup de grace, the crowning glory of KrugmanThink: “Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as ...
Space needs to answer some questions
Where in the world is Zack Space? He’s hiding under the bed. He’s seen the town hall meetings on the news, and he’s afraid one of us un-American, swastika-bearing mobsters will get upset with him about ObamaCare. “That’s not my style,” he says. Poor baby. I’m sure he’ll have the ...
Sticker Shock May Erode Public Support for Health Care Overhaul
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s draft health care bill may be in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own price tag, as “sticker shock” could cause what support there is for the government-centric health care transformation to ebb considerably. “Americans are by and large in ...
