Market Participation, aka Shopping, as a Toll of Neoliberalism: Obamacare as Case Study
Why Obamacare illustrates a big hidden cost of neoliberalism: that you are required to shop, and shopping is work.
Read more...Category Archives: Health care
401(k) Plan Abuses Finally Coming to Light
I doubt that I’m unusual in being a finance type who has heard about 401 (k) abuses and bad practices for a very long time. So it’s gratifying to see the Financial Times that something is finally being done to try to curb this behavior. But that is hardly the full extent of what is rotten in retirement fund land.
Read more...Why Obamacare Cannot “Insure” for Pre-Existing Conditions
Why “insurance” for existing conditions is a bit of a misnomer, and why that matters in terms of health care policy.
Read more...America’s Descent into Third World Status: Tropical Diseases Rise Among Poor (Update)
To the extent that middle class and more affluent people think about poverty in America, they likely have blurry, partial images due to distance and lack of direct experience. Their remedies might include better education and training, higher minimum wages, more affordable housing.
New Scientist thinks otherwise. Its headline for a blistering editorial: Want to fix US inequality? Begin with worming tablets.
Read more...ObamaCare and Its Opportunity Costs
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
The key point to remember in all discussions of ObamaCare is that neither it, nor indeed the entire private health insurance “industry,” should exist. They are rent-seeking parasites, economic tapeworms. One does not improve a tapeworm; one removes it.
Read more...Michael Olenick: Consumer Reports Joins Obama in Telling Obamacare Big Lies
After months of analysis I can objectively conclude that Obamacare is, to ordinary middle-class people, worse than worthless.
Read more...Obamacare’s Drug Coverage Minefield
Now that the consumer front end of Healthcare.gov seems to be under control (the insurer interface is another matter), public attention is now shifting to the ultimately more important question of what benefits patients receive, and at what cost.
Read more...Obama Kept His Head in the Sand During Healthcare.gov Fiasco
The New York Times has an instructive account, Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama, of the scrambling in the Administration to deal with the beyond-redeption-by-the-power-of-spin disaster of the Healthcare.gov launch.
Read more...Krugman, on ObamaCare, Gets the Wrong Worm
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Krugman’s latest — “The Obamacare Worm Turns” — is homer-esque even by the tribal Democrat standards of “Conscience of a Liberal.” But sadly, Krugman’s got the wrong worm. Let me explain. I can best do this in the form of a table:
Read more...ObamaCare, TINA, Medical Ethics, and the Health Care Economist
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
I probably shouldn’t even tangle with David Cutler; he’s from Harvard, and he’s wicked smart. Anyhow. Also too, he advised the 2008 Obama Campaign on health care. But there were some things he said in this recent interview with PBS (and in his now famous 2010 letter to Larry Summers) that really ticked me off, and so I want to lay down a few markers. First, let’s look at two charts:
Read more...Bob Goodwin: Software Engineering in Crisis – Healthcare.gov is Just the Dead Canary
It has been a good generation to be involved with software. The scarcity of the skillset combined with the demand for the output have generated outsized incomes, while the work has been consistently rewarding. Our quirky group of builders has had an outsized influence on our industries, not to mention our culture and ideals. But that influence is looking less benign as the rigid procedures of computing are changing commercial relationships and the application of the law.
Read more...Michael Olenick: Obamacare Pits the 50% Against the 49%
Buried on CNN’s website is a story about an early Obamacare success…
Read more...Another Lurking Obamacare Problem: Balance Billing
One of the proofs that Obamacare is really about helping insurers and Big Pharma rather than ordinary Americans is its failure to do much about the seamy practice known as balance billing.
Read more...ObamaCare Rollout: Administration PR Tactics and the First Release of Enrollment Numbers
The “enrollment” numbers for the Healthcare.gov website, even using the Administration’s Orwellian definition of “enrolled” was barely above half of the scary bad number published as a rumor by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.. Generous application of porcine maquillage followed.
Read more...Michael Olenick: Comprehensive Review of ObamaCare Plans Reveals Not Only High Cost for Atrocious Coverage, but Also Apparent Violations of ACA Requirements
After five weeks healthcare.gov presented insurance policies for my family to purchase. No wonder the website was dark for so long: the plans are expensive, atrocious, and the insurance companies look like they are cheating.
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