I want to propose a four-part test for measuring any particular bill on health care cost control. short run long run Federal deficit 1 2 Government health care spending X 3 Private health care spending X 4 In each case, I will define the test so that “yes” is a good outcome: Test 1: The […]
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Tag Archives: spending
Understanding the House Democrats' health care bill
9 June 2009 
218 Comments
Yesterday I posted and described the draft Kennedy-Dodd health care bill. Today I would like to do the same for an outline produced by House Democrats. Here is a three-page outline of “Key Features of the Tri-Committee Health Reform Draft Proposal in the House of Representatives,” dated yesterday (June 8, 2009). The three committees are: […]
Read more Understanding the Kennedy health care bill
8 June 2009 383 Comments
Over the weekend a draft of Senator Kennedy’s (D-MA) health care bill leaked. After playing with Adobe Acrobat, here is the text of the draft Kennedy bill as a text file (173 K), and as a single Acrobat file (3.4 MB). Update: I fixed the broken link to the PDF. Unlike the leaked version, both of […]
Read moreWill the stimulus come too late?
3 June 2009 38 Comments
I began this blog at the end of March after the stimulus bill had become law. I had been struck by how much the stimulus debate had focused on whether the bill was efficient. (It clearly was not.) There was much less discussion of whether the stimulus would be effective, and of the timing of […]
Read more Parsing the President’s health care reform letter
3 June 2009 11 Comments
The White House has released a letter from the President to the two Senate Chairmen who are working on (different) versions of health care reform: Senator Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The letter is dated yesterday and […]
Read more Third party payment in health care (part 3): Technology drives cost growth
18 May 2009 17 Comments
Imagine that Sony plans to bring to market a new TV that is twice as good as the old $500 TV but costs $200 more to produce. If instead it is twice as good but costs $2,000 more, they will probably hold off and look for a less expensive way to improve quality. Now imagine […]
Read more Budget: Baby Terminator
7 May 2009 49 Comments
Today the Administration released more detail for the President’s budget. The President tried to emphasize his fiscal responsibility by highlighting some of the programs he proposes to terminate or reduce. Budget Director Orszag released the Terminations, Reductions, and Savings volume. This morning the President said, But one of the pillars of this foundation is fiscal […]
Read moreIntro to TARP — TARP II: Direct investment
30 April 2009 5 Comments
Tuesday I began with a simple example, which I am calling Large Bank. Yesterday we looked at TARP I, in which the government would buy troubled/toxic assets from banks. Today I will describe TARP II, the plan we (the Bush Administration) implemented, in which the government made direct equity investments in banks to help fill […]
Read moreWill the Administration fund CSI: New Haven and Tattoo removal in L.A.?
24 April 2009 3 Comments
President Obama may not realize that the people who work for him are required to ignore hundreds (thousands?) of Congressional earmarks. The President has the ability to stop them from doing so. I hope that he will not. Thanks go to former OMB General Counsel Jeff Rosen for pointing this out. An Executive Order is […]
Read moreApparently $634 B is only the down payment for health care reform
22 April 2009 3 Comments
I had missed this from the President’s remarks to Congress on February 24th: This budget builds on these reforms. It includes a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. Budget Director Peter Orszag repeated the “down payment” language […]
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