The Moral Healthcare Blog

Charts: 6 Big Economic Myths, Debunked | Mother Jones

Charts: 6 Big Economic Myths, Debunked | Mother Jones: #1: The stimulus failed.

Everyone from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (PDF) to private-sector forecasting firms have concluded that the 2009 stimulus package increased economic growth, reduced unemployment, and put millions of people back to work. It just wasn’t big enough, or long-lasting enough.
Bust or Boost?

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amednews: [interactive graphic] How much do health plans make? – Revenue falls, but stock buybacks boost per-share earnings. … American Medical News

amednews: [interactive graphic] How much do health plans make? – Revenue falls, but stock buybacks boost per-share earnings. … American Medical News: – Sent using Google Toolbar

Study: Well fees still aren’t enough

Study: Well fees still aren’t enough:

Plugging an abandoned Marcellus Shale gas well in Pennsylvania could cost $100,000 or more, and well bonding changes proposed by the Corbett administration could stick taxpayers with almost all of that bill, according to a study from Carnegie Mellon University.

The CMU study found that the new Marcellus gas well bonding fees, recommended by Mr. Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission and now under consideration in the Republican-controlled Legislature, would require drilling companies to cover only a fraction of the costs of plugging and decommissioning old, nonproducing and abandoned gas wells.

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Commitment to Development Index : Center for Global Development

Commitment to Development Index : Center for Global Development:

Just in case you were wondering how the US does in foreign aid.

2011 Commitment to Development Index

Which wealthy nations are helping poor ones most? Rich and poor are linked in many ways. Each year, the CDI scores wealthy governments on helping poor countries via 7 linkages: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. It averages over the 7 for an overall score.

Here are the graphics for foreign aid, by itself. We in the US are 17th.

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Patients’ Grades to Affect Hospitals’ Medicare Reimbursements – NYTimes.com

Patients’ Grades to Affect Hospitals’ Medicare Reimbursements – NYTimes.com: Winning praise from patients has become a pressing — and often elusive — obsession for NYU and for hospitals nationwide. In the coming months, Medicare will start taking patient satisfaction into account when reimbursing hospitals. Disgruntled patients will mean reduced revenue, a frightening prospect for hospitals already facing empty beds because of the recession and pressure from insurers to hold down costs.

Medicare’s new rule, mandated in the Affordable Care Act, pits hospitals against one another in a competition to best satisfy patients; those with the best scores will receive more money.

But some hospitals are worried that assessments from patients like Ms. Schwartz can be influenced not just by the quality of their care, but also by amenities like single rooms, renovated units and tasty food. And hospitals in cities and certain regions, like the Northeast and California, tend to get lower ratings, raising concerns that their revenues will be reduced simply because patients in those places are more disposed to grumble about things that a polite Midwesterner or Southerner would forgive.

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Temperatures Rise Over Costs Of Care | Worcester Business Journal

Temperatures Rise Over Costs Of Care | Worcester Business Journal: Higher Sentiment For ‘Single Payer’?

Presumably, doctors are more familiar than the general public with the pressures driving up health care costs, and an overwhelming majority of them also say there needs to be some government involvement in the health care system. A survey by the Massachusetts Medical Society this fall found that 41 percent of doctors thought the best option for health care reform in the U.S. would be to adopt a single-payer system like Canada’s. That number was up from 34 percent in 2010.

Another 23 percent favor a mix of public and private plans, while 17 percent support reforms along the lines of the 2010 national health care reform act, including an individual mandate like Massachusetts’. Fifteen percent favor a system in which insurers can sell limited-benefit and high-deductible policies and the government gives subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance.

Lynda Young, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) and a Worcester pediatrician, said doctors who favor a single-payer system may see it as a way to avoid administrative burdens. She noted that a recent article in the policy journal Health Affairs found that Canadian doctors spend two or three hours a week on administration, compared with about 10 to 15 hours for doctors in the U.S.

Pretty remarkable, especially when you look at the numbers in the graph. 41% plus 23% for 64% favoring either single payer or a ‘public option’ added to the current mix. 17% OK with the PPACA as it is, and another 15% seeming to favor high deductible plans.

That’s a grand total of 81% favoring PPACA at least, the distinct minority, with the significant plurality favoring single payer. Wow.

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Obama’s War Against Americans is Relentless. His Primary Attack Force is the EPA. « Conservatives on Fire

Obama’s War Against Americans is Relentless. His Primary Attack Force is the EPA. « Conservatives on Fire:

I’m taking an epidemiology/population health this semester, and we were reviewing the topic of environmental and occupational health. I Googled for the war on the EPA, and found the article linked to here, concerning how liberals and other tree huggers were were trying to ruin the economy and take us into a Communist police state through use of the EPA. Of course, this is not new.

But I was stunned by the absolute ignorance of several of the paragraphs, this one in particular:

Dear readers I would appreciate it very much if you would let me know if in fact you do live longer or if you have fewer non-fatal heart attacks or if you experience fewer sick days after this new rule takes effect. I mean we really should keep these records so we can verify if the EPA’s projections were correct or not. So, again, please let me know how it turns out and I will be happy to compile the record and I’ll report back once I have a statistically significant amount of data.

I don’t have to explain to anyone with even the slightest amount of education in math or science how profoundly ignorant this is, and if it were just this one blogger, I’d laugh it off. But scroll through some of the comments if you have a strong stomach. Or Google for yourself and see more. Or look here to see Think Progress analysis of Fox News war on the EPA.

I refuse to believe that these people are as stupid as their statements make them sound. But it is deeply saddening to see how profoundly an ideology – Market Fundamentalism – can shut down critical thinking.

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Wallison: Still Wrong About Genesis of Housing Crisis | The Big Picture

Wallison: Still Wrong About Genesis of Housing Crisis | The Big Picture:

If you’ve been closely following the housing finance reform debate, you may have come across a pair of shrill blog posts penned by Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Republican appointee to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. He responded to my February 2011 article, “Faulty Conclusions Based on Shoddy Foundations,” which criticized the research underlying Wallison’s dissent from the majority of the members of that commission, and his contention that U.S. affordable housing policies caused the global financial crisis.

In these blog posts on The American Spectator’s blog on May 24 and on AEI’s blog on May 26, Wallison criticizes ”Faulty Conclusions” as “fallacious,” “fraudulent,” and “deceptive”; claims that it contains a “fake” chart; and describes the article as a “political screed.”

As I describe below, these accusations are baseless and distract from the fact that Wallison does not actually address the main arguments of “Faulty Conclusions.” Wallison does not contradict the claim that his FCIC dissent depends critically on the categorization of millions of home mortgage loans as “high risk” that are not actually high risk. Wallison also fails to answer other serious issues with his arguments that were pointed out in “Faulty Conclusions.”

I was watching Bill Maher the other night and John Fund was again blaming Freddie and Fannie (and low income people via the Community Reinvestment Act – the bastards!) for the great recession, and I was disappointed that Thom Hartmann didn’t protest more vigorously. I found this article via Brad Delong’s economics blog.

Basically, from the viewpoint of a non-economist, the guy flogging these claims was a minority of one, even with other Republicans on the Financial Crisis Commission, and one would think responsible conservatives would recognize the lack of credibility, yet this is the favorite meme among Fund and others who want to minimize the role of deregulation and crony capitalism for this mess.

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How Medicare Fails the Elderly – NYTimes.com

How Medicare Fails the Elderly – NYTimes.com:

“HERE is the dirty little secret of health care in America for the elderly, the one group we all assume has universal coverage thanks to the 1965 Medicare law: what Medicare paid for then is no longer what recipients need or want today. “

Goes on to delineate some of the problems with the Medicare payment system, that are not news if you’ve been paying attention, but always good to get it out there for further discussion.

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