Don Taylor

Could North Carolina became the first State to achieve universal health insurance coverage? A student asked me recently what it would take financially to do so, and how it could most simply and quickly be done. Here is a quick estimate. Using the Kaiser Family Foundations numbers, in 2016 there will be 1,216,000 uninsured persons […]

For all the bubble and boil the past 4.5 years on health reform, there are basic questions that have not been asked clearly, much less answered. An important one is how much subsidy should people get from government for their health insurance? The table below the jump is a quick estimate of the per capita […]

I wrote the essence of what is below on October 31 at my home blog but forgot to post it here due to sugar haze. Since then, a few bubbles of a supposed shift toward the GOP wanting to tweak the ACA instead of arguing for a repeal that will never come. I agree that […]

At present, 24 States (and DC) have decided to move ahead with the Medicaid expansion provided for in Obamacare, and 21 have rejected expansion, while 6 are still considering their options. If the current decisions hold, it will result in a self-imposed redistribution of money from poorer (and typically Red states), to richer (and typically […]

How do you want your children to get health insurance in 20 years? This was the first slide, and the last slide that I showed the Wake Forest, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce Health Care Summit yesterday. I was trying to encourage them to take a deep breath and think longer term about the type […]

The North Carolina General Assembly is set to enact a sweeping series of changes to the voting laws. The most high profile change has been the requirement to show an ID to vote. Nate Cohn says the requirement to show an ID would have reduced President Obama’s total in North Carolina by 25,000-30,000 votes, had […]

On December 16, 2010 I wrote a post that began: While the rhetoric around health reform has been incendiary from day one, in policy terms, a compromise between Democrats and Republicans using the outline of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has always been available. The two primary problems with the health care system are costs […]

Managed care companies are cherry picking the healthiest disabled senior dual eligible beneficiaries in New York state using a variety of methods, and excluding those needing the most care. The program provides a monthly per capita payment amount ($3,800/month) regardless of how much care is provided. The general theory is that the insurer has an […]

The President mentioned being open to Medicare reforms of similar cost magnitude to those proposed by the Simpson-Bowles report in the State of the Union. Here is a post from April, 2011 on the health policy proposals of the Simpson-Bowles report. Big picture, the most important thing to understand about Simpson-Bowles and health policy is […]

I have been meaning to write about the important court order overturning Medicare’s longstanding ‘improve or you’re out’ (of Medicare financed SNF and/or home health) policy for rehabilitation services. Basically, beneficiaries who had plateaued and could at best maintain function could not receive rehab services under these parts of the Medicare benefit package. Medicare has […]