Harold Pollack

It was a rough weekend for the Republican presidential ticket…. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney were battered… on the usually pretty-soft Sunday talk shows. How rough was it? As I worked out at the gym this morning, I watched Donald Trump lambaste NBC’s painfully moderate David Gregory as a virtually paid advocate for President Obama. […]

Everyone involved with Medicaid was high-fiving when President Clinton put Medicaid on the table in his nomination speech down in Charlotte. Yet a poignant New York Times story shows that there’s work to be done. Proposals to bloc grant and cut Medicaid are more concrete, more immediate, severe, and more likely to actually happen than […]

I’m not a huge fan of the whole First Lady convention speech thing. I wish we would let politicians be politicians, and that we would let political spouses be whatever it is that they wish to be, instead of dragging them up to various podiums to be surrogates or props. I’ll make an exception for […]

The Republican draft platform (h/t Politico) is out. Its Medicare* passages on are noteworthy: Medicare*, as the dominant payer in the health market…. is the next frontier of welfare reform. It is simply too big and too flawed to be managed in its current condition from Washington. Republican governors have taken the lead in proposing […]

The Economist magazine is not exactly a partisan left-wing rag. So their cover story this week, “So, Mitt, what do you really believe?” carries a little extra bite. Below are some representative quotes. …competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. ….he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say […]

The profusion of Ryan, Ryan-Wyden, House Republican, and Romney proposals on Medicare sparks legitimate debate regarding whether it’s fair to say that Republicans would “end Medicare as we know it.” Similar debate has raged over whether critics are right to say that Republicans would convert Medicare into a voucher program, and what that term really […]

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have been campaigning on Medicare–claiming that people over 55 and current Medicare recipients will be unaffected by their proposed conversion of Medicare from a universal comprehensive defined benefit to a variously-defined premium support program. I’m not wild about these proposals—which certainly do not shield current seniors and near-retirees from ill-effects. […]

Governor Romney has a new 30-second spot on the old standby of welfare reform. The ad claims that President Obama… Quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work. You wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check. […]

Brad Flansbaum draws my attention via Twitter to a remarkable story reported by Lela Moore in the New York Times. Arizona State doctoral student Arijit Guha has a bad cancer and a bad insurance plan. He was covered under his $400/month ASU Aetna Student Health plan that included a $300,000 dollar caps. He’s hit that […]

Yesteray’s New York Times includes a nice article by Annie Lowrey and Robert Pear on the coming already-here primary care doctor shortage. I have mixed feelings about the title, “Doctor Shortage Likely to Worsen With Health Law.” Pending expansions in access among the currently-uninsured is just one of many challenges facing the primary care system. […]