

Where the ACA Should Go Next?

run75441: This is the first in a series of 3 posts written by Maggie Mahar discussing Medicare, what it covers, and what it lacks in coverage. Maggie touches on the Public Option and Medicare. I start to get edgy when people talk about the Public Option, Universal Coverage, Single Payor, Medicare-For-All, etc. as they do not really define it and who will control its funding. We have a Congress which is intent on cutting the PPACA/ACA/Obamacare, which many take offense to today, and leave us with far less. I am not so sure we can trust Congress and politics to insure our healthcare.

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Dan <> emailed:

Rortybomb, New Piece on Where the ACA Should Go Next Rorty touts the 2009 House Bill which calls for a Public Option and described here To improve ‘Obamacare,’ reconsider the original House bill

Maggie Mahar replies:

Originally I favored a public option, but in fact, at the time, no one really spelled out who would run the public option–or how it would be run.

One of the best things about the ACA is that lets both HHS and CMS make end-runs around Congress. I would never want a public option that was run by Congress.

Here is the comment I just posted in reply to the post “Where the ACA Should Go Next”

I would need to know far more about the public option—and how it would be different from Medicare– before voting for it.

Medicare is extraordinarily wasteful– 1/3 of Medicare dollars are squandered on unnecessary treatments that provide no benefit to the patient. Why? Because Congress is Medicare’s board of directors, and lobbyists representing various specialist’ groups, hospitals, device-makers and drug-makers control Congress.

Meanwhile, Medicare does not cover much needed care, ie. vision checks are just one example. This is why the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries must buy separate private insurance (MediGap or Medicare Advantage) to supplement what medicare doesn’t cover.

Finally, I favor narrow networks. They keep costs down. The doctors and hospitals that are not included in the networks are those that refuse to negotiate  prices.  By excluding them we remind doctors and hospitals that we can no longer afford letting providers charge whatever they wish. No other developed nation allows doctors and hospitals to simply set prices.

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Simon Johnson on Tim Geithner and Elizabeth Warren

Simon Johnson offers pointed criticism of the role Timothy Geithner has played to date in the Great Recession and bank regulation, in particular as an advisor and architect to the Obama economic team and how that policy is presented and pursued in Congress. Another worthwhile read.

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WTO ruling: ‘free trade’ and ‘state capitalism’ needs broader discussion

A recent ruling on countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties by the World Trade Organization:
(bolding is mine)

Senior Economist Ian Fletcher for the Coalition for a Prosperous America offers one point of view:

The American position is that we are entitled to apply what are called “countervailing duties” against products that are subsidized by foreign governments. And on top of that, we are also entitled to apply duties designed to counteract the practice of dumping, or selling a product below cost in order to destroy foreign competitors.
Both these responses on our part have long histories of being accepted as legitimate, both under international trade law and in economics. (This is why the WTO had originally accepted our position; the new ruling is actually the result of an appeal by China.)

In terms of international law, one can trace the legitimacy of our policies at least as far back as the founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO’s predecessor, in 1947.
In terms of economics, their justifying logic is very simple.
In the case of subsidies, free trade only makes sense if it really is free, which means that a thumb on the scale at one end of the transaction justifies a tariff, or counter-subsidy, at the other end.
In the case of dumping, free trade is not justified if one side sells below cost in order to wipe out the other and thus eventually grab the market (or most of it) for itself. Even if the attempt fails, the damage done to our industries will be real, and by then it will be too late.
There’s no serious question about whether China engages in subsidies and dumping. That’s why, in this case, we imposed duties of up to 200 percent to offset their subsidies, plus up to 265 percent to counteract their dumping.
Enter state capitalism. The flashpoint of the current dispute centers on the vexed question of what price constitutes dumping in a non-free-market economy.
In a free-market economy like our own, dumping is considered to occur when a product is sold abroad for either less than its production cost, or less than what it is sold for domestically. Unfortunately, in an economy like China’s, which is so tightly controlled by the government that many prices are essentially whatever the government says they are, this logic doesn’t work. There are no normal prices to observe in order to figure out how big the subsidy is. So the U.S. Government has been using various statistical techniques to calculate the relevant prices.
The WTO has ruled that our techniques are not legit. Bottom line? We’re supposed to overlook the vast panoply of subsidies—ranging from free land to cheap loans and a million different tax credits—because state capitalism makes them tricky to calculate.

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Take a break …planning for efficiency

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism points us to exploring how the pursuit of “efficiency”, for example in supply chains, without assessing what other risks are involved and planning ahead can result in major problems:




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