June 29, 2011
Links for 2011-06-29
Some quick links to recent analyses of health care costs, oil price shocks, and forecasting commodity prices.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 11:27 AM permalink | Comments (9)
April 10, 2011
Paying for health care
Representative Paul Ryan's (R-WI) plan to address the U.S. federal deficit is an opportunity to reflect on fundamental questions of what we're trying to buy and how much we're willing to spend when it comes to the role of the government in health care.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 06:41 AM permalink | Comments (67)
November 04, 2010
"The Impact of Health Insurance Reform in Massachusetts"
The use of emergency rooms for routine care fell, as did hospital admissions for treating preventable conditions, and the proportion of uninsured among hospital inpatients (by 36%), while there was no increase in the growth of hospital costs. From the NBER Digest article summarizing NBER working paper 16012 [ungated version] by Jonathan T. Kolstad and Amanda E. Kowalski:
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 10:28 AM permalink | Comments (34)
April 19, 2010
Joe Lawler and Joe Stiglitz Agree!
Or, on economic costs versus budget costs
From American Spectator, Joe Lawler writes:
"The cost ... to the budget, though, is not the only relevant cost."
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 07:35 AM permalink | Comments (10)
March 31, 2010
PPACA and "What If?" Scenarios
Or, if we have Excel, why can't journalists and bloggers add and subtract, and do sensitivity analysis?
From Dobridge, Hooper, Slok, "Overview of the 2010 Health Reform Bill," Deutsche Bank Global Economic Perspectives March 31, 2010. [not online]
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 08:30 PM permalink | Comments (26)
March 30, 2010
Congress seeks more information on health care charges
AT&T announced last week that it would charge $1 billion against its earnings as a result of the recently passed health care bill. Other companies also announcing charges include Caterpillar ($100 M), John Deere ($150 M), and MMM ($85-90 M). Analyst David Zion of Credit Suisse estimated that S&P 500 companies will rack up a combined $4.5 B charge.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 04:04 PM permalink | Comments (23)
March 21, 2010
Why reform health care?
Amidst all the preoccupation with the procedural details of how health care legislation is likely to be implemented, I was glad to see Paul Krugman make the case for why reform is needed in the first place.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 06:56 AM permalink | Comments (72)
March 19, 2010
The Mason-Dixon Line in Health Care Reform: Economists Edition
The WSJ Real Time Economics blog has posted the letters for and against the health care reform bill winding through Congress. The most interesting thing about the lists of signatories is the geographical divide. It was so interesting, I did a fast tabulation (so, don't quote me on it), and what one finds is that of the list in favor, only 2 of 41 economists are affiliated with institutions in the South (defined using the most restrictive definition in this Wikipedia page -- so to be completely accurate, I haven't used the actual Mason-Dixon line). Of the 131 signatories to the against letter, 40 are affiliated with institutions in the South, i.e., essentially 30% of the total. A list of affiliations is below:
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 12:31 PM permalink | Comments (46)
July 05, 2009
Off-balance-sheet federal liabilities
Just how much has the U.S. government promised to pay?
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Posted by James Hamilton at 02:14 PM permalink | Comments (34)
February 01, 2009
Worth reading
Links to a few items I found interesting on non-residential structure investment, the "bad bank" proposal, and separation of powers.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 07:17 AM permalink | Comments (10)
April 19, 2007
The politics of future promises
I have been detailing concerns about meeting the pension and health care obligations of the city and county of San Diego. Although these challenges arise at the level of our local government, the problem appears to be national in scope, as a sampling of stories from PensionWatch makes clear.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 08:52 AM permalink | Comments (20)
February 09, 2007
Is a 12 Step Program Needed for Policymaking in Washington?
From the Wikipedia entry on 12-step programs:
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 03:40 PM permalink | Comments (8)
January 19, 2007
Bernanke on the deficit
In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee yesterday, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke once again tells it like it is.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 05:25 AM permalink | Comments (20)
May 31, 2006
Does a new economic team mean a new economic policy?
Henry Paulson has been nominated to the position of Secretary of Treasury. Will it matter?
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Posted by Menzie Chinn at 07:53 PM permalink | Comments (8)
December 19, 2005
Declining real wages
How concerned should we be about the downward trend in real wages?
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Posted by James Hamilton at 08:39 PM permalink | Comments (29)
November 15, 2005
Facing the 900-pound gorilla
Sooner or later we have to do something about Medicare. Why not sooner?
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Posted by James Hamilton at 03:14 PM permalink | Comments (34)
August 22, 2005
Murky future for Merck
So what's the big deal? We'll just get some other company to take its place in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 11:06 PM permalink | Comments (31)
August 13, 2005
Investigating charges of Medi-Cal fraud
There are some obvious steps we could take to make sure that state and federal contributions for medical assistance are spent as effectively as possible.
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Posted by James Hamilton at 04:00 PM permalink | Comments (7)
June 29, 2005
Romney's new health care proposal
The governor of Massachusetts has some new ideas for health care that, if nothing else, may help stimulate public discussion of the problem and our options for dealing with it.
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Posted by econbrowser at 09:54 PM permalink | Comments (7)