Austin Frakt

“It’s not the age bands,” writes Harold. He’s right. It isn’t. I have no disagreement with what Harold wrote. However, I may be more open to additional modifications to community rating in the individual market if the Affordable Care Act’s current structure fails. I am not predicting failure. I am not supporting failure. I am […]

True, Americans don’t understand some fundamentally important details of Obamacare very well. But it’s not just Obamacare. They don’t understand lots of fundamentally important details of today’s health insurance products. Consider health savings accounts (HSAs). A recent survey for Fidelity Investments (PDF) found that a sample of American adults responsible for household health insurance decision-making […]

A new paper in JAMA Internal Medicine by McCrum, Joynt, Orav, Gawande, and Jha delivers good news about hospital quality ratings. Of course, it’s wonky good news, so come with me into the weeds and I’ll explain. In an accompanying commentary Smith and Shannon begin with Los Angeles County’s experience with publicly reported restaurant quality […]

Sarah Kliff and Ezra Klein wrote, How many younger people are needed each year to hold down premiums depends on how many people sign up for the marketplaces. If the total this year is 7 million people, then about 2.7 million need to be in the 18-to-35 set. I’ve heard this need for 2.7M young […]

Just out. Watch all the way to the end, then comment. Fair? Sufficiently complete? Clear? Confusing? [Originally posted at The Incidental Economist]

So, the employer mandate is delayed a year. Why not make it two, three, or infinitely more? Years ago, I wrote many posts questioning why we should want to encourage the continuation of employer-based health insurance (ESI). I know of no economist who likes the idea of wedding health insurance to employment. It distorts employment […]

We tend to equate “technology” with “high-tech,” e.g., devices built on microprocessors. That’s a mistake. “Technology” is broader than that, encompassing any practical application of scientific knowledge. There are many, valuable low-tech technologies in health care, as in most other areas of human activity. Hand washing to reduce infection is one. Any evidence-based change in […]

From The New Yorker: [Originally posted at The Incidental Economist]

In the New England Journal of Medicine Nick Seddon and Thomas Lee make a claim worth considering and discussing. Only when societies commit to covering all their citizens with their limited resources do they take on the difficult work of improving the value of care. […] Universal coverage creates challenges — notably, the rationing that […]

We’ve all heard about Oregon’s Medicaid experiment, but there was another one recently that deserves a bit of attention too: Wisconsin’s. Unlike Oregon, Wisconsin did not randomize people into eligibility for Medicaid. But it did do something that makes it a good target for study. In January 2009 and in Milwaukee County, the state automatically […]