Premium Support?s Cost Control Problem
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 21st, 2011 5:37 am by HL
Premium Support?s Cost Control Problem
My colleague Ezekiel Emanuel makes two important points in a New York Times critique of the new Wyden/Ryan Medicare premium support plan: 1) since the proposal maintains the spending cap of GDP plus 1 percent already included in the Affordable Care Act, Wyden/Ryan “saves nothing in the federal budget,” and 2) the plan shifts beneficiaries […]
My colleague Ezekiel Emanuel makes two important points in a New York Times critique of the new Wyden/Ryan Medicare premium support plan: 1) since the proposal maintains the spending cap of GDP plus 1 percent already included in the Affordable Care Act, Wyden/Ryan “saves nothing in the federal budget,” and 2) the plan shifts beneficiaries into less efficient private plans without actually improving the efficiency of health care delivery. “To address the root of the cost problem, we must change how we pay doctors and hospitals,” Emanuel explains. “We must move away from fee-for-service payments to bundled payments that include all the costs of caring for a patient, thereby encouraging providers to keep patients healthy and avoid unnecessary services. Medicare should announce that it will make this change by Jan. 1, 2022, and that it will begin by switching to bundled payments for cardiac and orthopedic surgery within one year and for cancer patients within five.”
Santorum: ?I?m For Income Inequality?
GOP contender Rick Santorum picked up an important endorsement today with the official backing of Iowa kingmaker Bob vander Plaats of the FAMiLY Leader. Campaigning at the organization’s headquarters in Pella, Iowa, Santorum made some surprising remarks in support of income inequality: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality. I think some people […]
GOP contender Rick Santorum picked up an important endorsement today with the official backing of Iowa kingmaker Bob vander Plaats of the FAMiLY Leader. Campaigning at the organization’s headquarters in Pella, Iowa, Santorum made some surprising remarks in support of income inequality:
“They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality. I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality..
“President Obama is for income equality. That’s socialism. It’s worse yet, it’s Marxism,” Sanoturm said. “I’m not for income equality. I’m not for equality of result – I’m for equality of opportunity.”
Oddly, Santorum acknowledged that social and income mobility is lagging in America — a key reason income inequality exists, through no fault of workers who find themselves working harder and longer for less money. The decline of social mobility contradicts Santorum’s assertion that people making more money deserve it because they work harder.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has put America’s staggering wealth gap front and center in the national debate. Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent while middle class wages stagnated. The top 1 percent controls roughly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. At the very top of the income scale, the 400 richest Americans have seen their share of income quadruple in the last 12 years, while their effective tax rates were halved.
A recent poll found that Americans’ fears about income inequality are growing, with two-thirds of likely voters saying the middle class is shrinking, and 55 percent saying that income inequality has become a big problem for the country. Santorum, evidently, thinks more of the same is what they need.
