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Nate Silver breaks down the math on the yet-to-be-revealed Senate Finance Committee bill, which according to the Associated Press might drop the public health insurance option and the employee coverage mandate.
The so-called “tricommittee” House bill can be downloaded here (pdf).
As the House and Senate flail around on a reform plan, Fresh Air’s Terri Gross today talked with journalist Maggie Mahar about controlling health care costs.
Despite all the uncertainty about what Congress will — or won’t — do on health care before leaving for a five-week- month-long August break, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s July health care tracking poll finds continued support for taking action now. Doubts are registering, but it’s an open question whether misgivings are mounting because people don’t want reform or because they don’t want reform that’s watered down and that largely continues the system of high cost and diminished choice.
How they do it. If you can’t view the video below, watch it here.
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The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports health care reform, released a report today finding that many insured people with three or more chronic conditions are shelling out more than they can afford in premiums and other health care costs. From the abstract:
Using data from the 2001–2005 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, this study shows that nearly 40 percent of nonelderly adults with three or more chronic conditions had out-of-pocket expenses and premiums exceeding 5 percent of income for two consecutive years, compared with 20 percent of people who had a single chronic condition and 14 percent who had no chronic conditions. Prescription drug spending accounts for over half of the out-of-pocket spending by individuals who have multiple chronic conditions and who have had persistently high financial burdens that last two years or more.
Another report issued last week by the Fund finds that including a public insurance option in a health insurance exchange would ring $265 billion in administrative cost savings over 10 years.
According to media reports, he was 78. Angela’s Ashes is one of those all-too-rare books that is both well-written and well-sold. Here, in an interview broadcast in 1996, he talks with Fresh Air’s Terri Gross about his very long career as a writing teacher in the New York City public school system and about writing the famous, funny memoir for which he will be known.
The Apollo 11 crew celebrates an anniversary. The landing was July 20, 1969, at 3:17 p.m. (I just wonder if the president was somehow able to turn the conversation to health care. Talk about a “Buzz”-kill.) (ha! 🙂
From left: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and Neil Armstrong. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
If you’re interested in the state of health care reform, this July 16 interview on Fresh Air amounts to a well-explained summary of where we’re at on Capitol Hill. The reporter, Jonathan Cohn, of the center-left The New Republic, gives a pretty fair hearing to all sides.
If there exists a mystical world where employees don’t routinely switch health care plans, mostly for cost reasons, please tell me the planet and how to get there. An informal survey of friends who work in small- to medium-sized businesses reveals that their employers switch health care plans nearly annually, with very little regard for which employee might lose a particular doctor. They have no choice: it’s the cost of trying to find a plan that they can afford.
So, media, perhaps instead of obsessing over whether health care reform will lead to workers having to switch plans or doctors, I’d say this: your time would be better spent reporting about the merits or demerits of a particular proposal.
As employers shop around for the best deal, trying desperately not to drop coverage altogether, many workers have gotten used to having to switch plans and doctors. Most of the time, they’re thankful to have any coverage at all.
Cutting grass out of your life. If you can’t view the video below, watch it here.
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