To ensure that the federal government’s borrowing capacity does not become exhausted within the next 25 to 50 years, the growth in federal health care spending must be reduced relative to baseline spending. I provide two scenarios that would provide additional borrowing capacity. These would require federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the insurance subsidies to be reduced by at least 7.5 percent of baseline spending, or 0.5 percent of the economy, over the 2025 to 2034 budget window.
Beginning structural reforms sooner rather than later will allow a path of continuous growth in the budget for health programs while avoiding much larger, drastic cuts in the future as well as problematic future tax increases, inflation, and higher interest rates.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Thursday Links
- Transparency: Hospitals still don’t want you to know how much you are going to have to pay. CMS has issued nearly 500 warning notices and over 230 requests for corrective action. The penalty for non-compliance in 2022 is up to $5,500 per day (more than $2 million a year).
- Hospitals still don’t want you to know what you are going to be charged: Nearly 500 get a warning from CMS.
- Study: 57 percent of nurses felt “exhausted” over the past two weeks, 43 percent felt “burned out,” and just 20 percent said they felt valued.
- Light pollution: one-third of the people in the world can’t see the Milky Way. (NYT)
- Not following the science. The most rigorous and comprehensive study to date: masks don’t work. CDC tells schools to require them anyway.
Wednesday Links
- Covid lockdown measures worldwide reduced the seismic noise of the planet by up to 50 percent.
- Canadian study: for roughly half the population, drinking coffee increases the risk of kidney dysfunction.
- The federal government is now required to engage in explicitly racist hiring.
- David Henderson: The “1619 Project” on Hula vindicates Capitalism (WSJ)
- The generic drug market isn’t as competitive as we thought.
- Digital health: The share of U.S. adults who said they use health applications has grown 6 percentage points to 40% since December 2018, while the share of adults who said they use wearables has grown by 8 points to 35%.
Monday Links
- George Halvorson defends Obamacare (but mainly a reformed Medicare Advantage program).
- Does the obese character in The Whale really deserve our sympathy?
- Medicare Advantage enrollment is now 31.2 million – roughly half of the Medicare population.
- DOL: The low-end estimate for improper (Covid) unemployment insurance payments – mostly fraud – is $191 billion.
- Estimates attribute 15 – 30 percent of total national health spending to administration, with at least half ($300 – $600 billion a year) demonstrated to be ineffective or wasteful.