Avg monthly healthcare spending for enrollees age 60-64 in large employer plans is 38% higher than that for traditional Medicare beneficiaries age 65-69.
Why? Price. Provider payment rates from private plans tend to be much higher than those from Medicare kff.org/medicare/issue…
large employer plans pay between 1.6 to 2.5 times more than Medicare for the same type of inpatient admission. Over time, the payment rate differential has also been increasing, per KFF kff.org/medicare/issue…
This is part of the reason why expanding Medicare (either to just to 50ish+, or everyone) is politically difficult. Advocates say it would reduce overall U.S. healthcare spending -- which it might, but probably only if providers (hospitals, doctors, etc.) take a big haircut.
Reducing provider prices is sort of the 3rd rail of health reform. Americans hate greedy insurers, which they think earn too much money (even tho insurers' profit margins are effectively capped; providers' aren't). But they like their dr, & local hospital is often a big employer
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If Biden cares about his legacy, he should make his great new child allowance permanent, and slash child poverty forever. But right now his plan is to just extend it a few years, cross his fingers & hope whoever controls govt in 2025 decides to renew it washingtonpost.com/opinions/biden…
relevant context for what a huge risk this is: in 2024, incumbent Senate Dems in Montana, West Virginia, Michigan and other purple/red states are up for re-election.
I'm told Biden wants a temporary extension, rather than permanency, b/c he wants to be fiscally responsible & keep down costs of overall plan. But doing a series of piecemeal extensions of child allowance would likely be MORE expensive in long run than making it permanent upfront
answer depends on distribution of willingness to pay in remaining theater-going population, & how much differentiation there is in quality of seats in a given theater. shows can set vastly diff prices for diff quality seats (and do) rather than leave some unsold; challenge is…
...making sure low-priced seats are still unattractive enough (far back, partially obstructed etc) that they don't entice the higher-paying customers to buy them rather than splurge on good, expensive seats. (this is a challenge airlines, etc. face too of course.)
If not enough differentiation in quality, and huge differences in willingness to pay, then possible that shows would set prices high enough to leave some seats empty in order to maximize revenue.
“They made the calculation that in political terms this would be something that could be used against them...The waffling is probably going to be used against them more than if they'd just stuck with doing the right thing.” politi.co/3eht569
Much of reporting about why Biden delayed implementing, & then reneged on, his promised 62.5k refugee cap suggests it was driven by fear of how Republicans would portray a higher cap—that GOP would conflate refugees w border surge & falsely accuse Dems of promoting "open borders"
My feeling is: There's a useful analogy in an observation made last year by now-Sec. Pete Buttigieg. As he noted during primary, no matter what the Democratic economic agenda, Repubs would accuse Dems of socialism. So might as well just pursue econ policies they think are good
White House correspondents have asked Psaki at least 6 times when Biden is going to raise the refugee ceiling/lift Trump refugee restrictions, as Biden announced he'd do. She has not answered. Response typically some combo of "Biden remains committed to refugees" + "no updates"
Feb 2 (from before Biden's State Dept sent a report to Congress on 2/12 about proposed 62,500 cap & admission categories) whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Another survey about expected elements of Biden's infrastructure/families plans finds every item has support from majority of the public today.yougov.com/topics/politic…
Views on different elements vary by party. Here's net support (% "favor" minus % "oppose") by party affiliation of survey respondent.
When presented options for an infrastructure bill defined more narrowly (just roads+bridges) vs more broadly (those things + energy, water, housing, healthcare, manuf, etc), public prefers broader version by about 2:1.
The broader version is Biden's approach; narrower is GOP's
Lots of people have written to me arguing for cutting Biden slack, he's cleaning up Trump's immigration messes, the record-low refugee admissions we're on track for must somehow be Trump's fault, etc. Some thoughts on this line of argument... 🧵washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I wholeheartedly agree that Trump did a lot to hobble the U.S. immigration system, including the refugee system. I wrote about this in depth last year: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
It will take a lot of work and resources to rebuild that immigration infrastructure & the refugee pipeline in particular. Not just scaling up circuit rides & other parts of the screening process, but reopening local resettlement agency affiliates that have closed, etc.