We predicted that one outcome would be overpriced insurance that didn’t cover much (note for middle class and affluent consumers, it would probably be better to have only catastrophic coverage and self insure for the rest; the worst is pricey insurance that leaves you carrying meaningful costs, particularly for major medical procedures). We seem to be moving in that direction already.
Read more...This chart says it all. The medical-industrial complex and American policymakers should be ashamed. Hat tip Business Insider.
Read more...Yves here. I have some quibbles with Apgar’s argument, since he avoids the obvious, but unpalatable-to-Obama solution of a public health care system. That’s why defense and homeland security don’t have free rider problems: they are tax funded. But he also raises the issue that a ruling that strikes down Obamacare could do collateral damage.
Read more...Ironically, the Roberts Court could actually be the instrument that leads us toward something approaching a rational, affordable healthcare provision.
Read more...There is an important study in the Archives for Internal Medicine last month, which escalates an ongoing row as to whether patient satisfaction is in any way correlated with positive medical outcomes. The answer is yes, and the correlation is negative.
This finding is of critical importance, not just in understanding why American medicine is a hopeless, costly mess, but also as a window into how easy it is for buyers of complex services to be hoodwinked by their servicer provider, whether via the provider being incorrectly confident about his ability to do a good job or having nefarious intent.
Read more...I suspect many Naked Capitalism readers would regard “democratic governance” as something of an oxymoron in the US. Our favorite curmudgeon, political scientist Tom Ferguson, discussed the failure of the supercommittee negotiations and what it means for politics and the economy. He sees the danger of government by technocrats, meaning experts who are really fronts for banking interests, as rising.
Read more...Yves here. This post from MacroBusiness points to a development that has (predictably) gone largely unreported in America, namely, that life expectancy is declining. The article discusses some of the probable causes and implications. It interestingly omits rising income disparity as a culprit. We quoted Michael Prowse on this topic in early 2007:
Read more...Those who would deny a link between health and inequality must first grapple with the following paradox. There is a strong relationship between income and health within countries. In any nation you will find that people on high incomes tend to live longer and have fewer chronic illnesses than people on low incomes.
Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and health largely disintegrates.
New Zealand company New Image Group is the supplier of the bogus fuel economy product behind Australia’s biggest stock fraud. And New Image is still selling it!
Read more...New Zealand is playing host to the sort of large scale miracle cure scam that would get investigated for wire fraud in the US. One company even has a New Zealand stock exchange listing!
Read more...A rising tide did not lift all boats even when the economy looked a lot better than it does now. As Francois T, an MD and medical researcher, wrote:
If you need ONE Indicator of how a nation is doing, it ought to be female life expectancy at birth. It is a tell tale sign that a lot of good things, (or bad things) are happening in the nation under study. Hence, forget about CDOs, CDS, RMBS, Pure BS, Official BS and what have you. Female LEAB will tell you something much more fundamental. It will also be a proof that everything you wrote about the deleterious societal impacts of financial high crimes is correct. As a matter of fact, people severely underestimate the real repercussions and total costs of a decrease in female life expectancy at birth.
He pointed to a just-released study, Falling behind: life expectancy in US counties from 2000 to 2007 in an international context. Some of its major findings:
Read more...By Jon Walker, a senior policy analyst at Firedoglake. Cross posted from Firedoglake.
Worrying about long term deficits with official unemployment over 9 percent and treasury bonds rates at near-record lows is inherently an act of madness. It is the antithesis of both progressive policy and basic logic. Left to their own devices, liberals would relegate reducing the deficit to a very low priority in this economic climate. Of course when you’re a billionaire like Pete Peterson and you’re willing to spend millions promoting deficit hysteria, your can convince “liberals” to play into your deficit fetish at even the most illogical of times. Hence the Peter G. Peterson Foundations 2011 Fiscal Summit.
I’ve berated all the so called “progressive” groups that took part in the Peter G. Peterson Foundation 2011 Fiscal Summit for including health care reform in their deficit reduction proposals, yet totally abandoning the traditional progressive solution: a single payer health care system. If the United States simply adopted a system that was roughly as efficient as France, Finland, Norway, Australia, Denmark, England, or New Zealand, we wouldn’t have a deficit. Yet the clear and demostrable global precedent set by these nations somehow managed to escape inclusion by these leading liberal economic lights.
The Roosevelt Institute’s deficit plan, however, deserves special attention. Of the three plans, it is particularly bad on the issue of health care.
Read more...This is a bit of a departure from our regular programming, but we like science and technology here (real technology, not the rent-seeking you see in finance misbranded as “innovation”) and this is impressive. Hat tip Francois T. From TED:
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager who writes at New Deal 2.0. If we’re forced back to square one by the Supreme Court, why not get it right? My colleague, Bo Cutter, has noted the likelihood of continued challenges to health care reform in the wake of the recent Florida State […]
Read more...I’m of the school that PowerPoint has served as the breeding ground for many misguided efforts to gussy up simple messages with unproductive or even worse, confusing and misleading graphics. This is an example of the opposite, a very good use of visualization of a large and complex data set by Hans Rosling, who has made a near art form of this sort of thing. Notice how the tradeoff between wealth and life expectancy flattens once a reasonable level of wealth has been achieved.
Read more...President Obama can solve the economy’s problems and win back his base, but he has to get with the program first.
For once, let’s praise President Obama (marginally), not bury him. As Bo Cutter has already argued, in the aftermath of the elections, the president probably did the best he could do on taxes. Ideally, the issue shouldn’t have even been something to haggle over in the first place had the Democrats (including the president) dealt with it before the midterms.
That said, the president’s petulant rant directed at his base was pathetic and misconceived in the extreme. The “No Drama Obama” guise clearly does not extend to his now frustrated supporters. Obama still genuinely does not have a clue as to why he has lost the trust of so many progressives. Many would have been prepared to cut him some slack if he had given them anything over the past two years, rather than a perpetuation of Rubinomics — an economically regressive blend of crony capitalism and deficit reduction fetishism.
To deal with income inequality, you need something more radical. You need reforms such as caps on executive pay and probably a system that simplifies the tax structure (to avoid creative tax avoidance), along with a broad base and a few basic, low rates to ensure a modicum of compliance….
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