The Culprit Behind High U.S. Health Care Prices
Employers are to blame for high and widely divergent prices for health care in the United States, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe New Subsidy for Layoffs
It seems likely that the Affordable Care Act will induce more people to retire and more employers to lay workers off, an economist writes.
View ArticleHealth Spending: Watching for a Rebound
The recent moderation in health care spending is cited as a sign of efficiency and has inspired new hope for deficit reduction. But as the economy improves, medical outlays may surge anew.
View Article‘Premium Shock’ and ‘Premium Joy’ Under the Affordable Care Act
Changing systems of health insurance that will take effect later this year under the Affordable Care Act will benefit many people, but lead to higher premiums for some, an economist writes.
View ArticleA World of Rising Health Care Costs
A report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests that the increase in medical costs in many countries in the coming decades is likely to be even steeper than in the...
View ArticleMost U.S. Health Spending Is Exploding — but Not for Mental Health
Mental health spending has remained roughly 1 percent of the economy since 1986, while total health spending has climbed from about 10 percent of gross domestic product in 1986 to nearly 17 percent in...
View ArticleConfusing the Public on the Affordable Care Act
Many opponents of the Affordable Care Act have used cautionary warnings of its impact, and some of them are jam-packed with misleading information, an economist writes.
View ArticlePutting Off the Employer Mandate
Although the White House is delaying a provision requiring employers to offer health coverage or pay a penalty, the key aspects of the Affordable Care Act should be little affected, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe New Economics of Part-Time Employment
The Affordable Care Act will make part-time employment more attractive to many workers, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe Path to Complexity on the Health Care Act
An economist formerly in the Obama administration says the need to accommodate the current employer-based insurance system has made the Affordable Care Act a challenge to carry out.
View ArticleWhat Makes U.S. Health Insurance Exchanges So Complicated
Americans' insistence on broad choices in health insurance raises both the cost and complexity of establishing insurance exchanges, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe Question of Taxing Employer-Provided Health Insurance
There's little likelihood that Congress will consider eliminating the highly popular tax exemption for employer-provided health benefits, even though that would be good policy, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe Sleeper in Health Care Payment Reform
An old plan for holding down health costs is being revived under the name of "reference pricing," in which an insurer or an employer covers only a low-priced version of the good or service in question,...
View ArticleWho Abandoned the Health Insurance Credit
It wasn't Congressional Republicans who moved the health care debate away from a proposal to extend coverage through a tax credit, an economist writes.
View ArticleHealth Care Inflation and the Arithmetic of Labor Taxes
Data and arithmetic make clear that the Affordable Care Act could have negative effects on employment, despite the optimism of the law's supporters, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe Economics of the Affordable Care Act
Casey Mulligan's negativity about the Affordable Care Act fails to acknowledge how it is likely to reduce health care expenditures, an economist writes.
View ArticleHaving More Doctors Might Reduce Health Spending. Or Maybe Increase It.
Increasing the ranks of doctors might reduce prices of individual services, but could also encourage unnecessary tests and procedures to compensate.
View ArticleControlling Health Care Spending, Revisited
It is unlikely that health care spending in the United States will grow more quickly than gross domestic product, an economist writes.
View ArticleThe Central Challenge in U.S. Health Policy
Without wealthier households sharing more costs of health care, many Americans will continue to find health care unaffordable, an economist writes.
View ArticleObamacare vs. Romneycare: The Labor Impact
Disruption to the labor market is likely to be far greater from the Affordable Care Act than what Massachusetts faced after it adopted its own health care law, an economist writes.
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