Search the News Archive

The Limited Reach of Employer-Based Health Insurance

"The share of the U.S. population over the age of 15 covered by employment-based health insurance (either by their own employer or as a dependent) has been falling, dropping from 64.4% in 1997 to 56.5% in 2010."

The Health System We'd Have If Economists Ran Things

"[N]early 70 percent of health economists are comfortable charging people more if they engage in unhealthy behaviors that lead to higher health costs. The ACA allows marketplace plans to do just that based on smoking.... Many of today's conversations about reducing health spending focus on prescription drugs. A good deal of drug spending ends up as profits for the pharmaceutical industry -- drug company profit margins above 15 percent are not uncommon.... A plurality of health economists seem to question this argument."

More Bombast from Andrew Biggs on Public Pension Plans

"[Economist Andrew] Biggs takes on the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) and the pension administrators who belong to it. He labels as 'nonsense' the NIRS 'Pensionomics' research that shows how each dollar of pension benefits produces $2.37 in economic output, creating millions of new jobs and billions in additional labor income. According to Biggs, the NIRS research is 'faulty' ... NIRS executive director, Diane Oakley, argues that 'What doesn't make sense is the nation's broken retirement infrastructure.' ... [To] the extent that opponents of DB plans [for teachers in public schools] are reaching out for new reasons to support their 'conversion' arguments could suggest that perhaps some of their older ones are not gaining much traction? One can only hope."

Uwe Reinhardt: 'The U.S. is Not a Democracy; it's an Aristocracy' - Implications for Healthcare Reform

Excerpt: In a private conversation with bloggers at the Families USA healthcare conference last week, Princeton healthcare economist Uwe Reinhardt recalled a conversation, when he asked health care economist Victor Fuchs, 'When will we ever have universal health insurance in the U.S.?' Fuchs' answer: 'Not until World War III, a Great Depression, or a major epidemic that threatens everyone.'

What Sweden Can Tell Us About Obamacare

"Swedish health economists ... have spent their lives under a system in which most health care providers work directly for the government.... So if extensive government involvement in health care is indeed a recipe for doom, they should have clear evidence of that by now. Yet none of them voiced the kinds of complaints about recalcitrant bureaucrats and runaway health costs that invariably surface in similar conversations with American colleagues."