Visual Source: Newseum
NY Times on the old Bush money machine:
“None of the candidates have instantly identified themselves as a leader for the Republican movement,” Mr. Hoffman said. “The Bush family were instantly identifiable as leaders.”
He is far from alone. Two and a half years after Mr. Bush left the White House, the formidable network of Republican donors he assembled has largely melted away. Fewer than one in five of Mr. Bush’s Rangers and Pioneers, the elite corps of “bundlers” who helped Mr. Bush smash fund-raising records in his two runs for the White House and remain the gold standard of Republican fund-raising, have contributed to any of the current Republican candidates, according to a New York Times analysis.
NY Times:
For decades, oil and gas industry executives as well as regulators have maintained that a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that is used for most natural gas wells has never contaminated underground drinking water. ..
It is a refrain that not only drilling proponents, but also state and federal lawmakers, even past and present Environmental Protection Agency directors, have repeated often.
But there is in fact a documented case, and the E.P.A. report that discussed it suggests there may be more. Researchers, however, were unable to investigate many suspected cases because their details were sealed from the public when energy companies settled lawsuits with landowners.
Check out Health costs up, solutions in short supply and this really interesting blog post from Austin Frakt (h/t HeyMikey):
Anyway, I’m asking my readers to put together a list of possible ways to save money in Medicare. This is a service to you. I hope you find it helpful. To get started, here’s my (incomplete) list. In time, I think/hope you’ll find more in the comments below.
Competitive bidding, also known as competitive pricing. This idea really puts the market to work to buy Medicare benefits for the lowest possible price on a market-by-market basis. Participants can be public and private entities. It piggybacks on the exiting, hybrid structure of Medicare (FFS Medicare + Medicare Advantage) and makes all participating plans compete directly in a way they never have. Scholars have estimated the savings to be 8% of Medicare spending. I’ve written a lot about this elsewhere. Perhaps this post is the best place to start.
Competitive bidding can be put to work for durable medical equipment too. See the work of Peter Crampton.
Part D formulary design and drug pricing. Did you know the VA buys drugs for 40% less than Medicare? True! That alone suggests Medicare could spend a lot less on drugs. There are many possible Part D reforms that would lower program spending. Kevin Outterson wrote about some. For more about what it would take and mean to make Medicare’s drug benefit more like the VA’s see my post, which links to my paper with Steve Pizer and Roger Feldman.
Reference pricing. This idea came to me via David Leonhardt and Peter Orszag (smart guys, by the way; you should talk to them). The basic idea is that Medicare should only spend an amount on therapy for a condition equal to the lowest cost, effective one (that’s the “reference price”). If individuals want more costly therapies that are no more effective, they should pay the difference out of pocket. There’s more to this. See this prior post and related links therein.
There are lots of things Medicare shouldn’t even be paying for at all because they don’t work. See Rita Redberg’s NY Times op-ed on this.
Support comparative effectiveness research so we can learn more about which therapies are most effective. There is too much we don’t know and it is costing us.
Let ACOs be tested. We don’t know if they’ll work, but they’re worth a try.
Support the IPAB. Isn’t it obvious by now that Congress itself can’t control Medicare costs?
Consider all-payer rate setting. More on that here. Perhaps this post is a good starting point.
Kaiser Health News:
A new survey finds that employers are providing benefits to a growing number of people, particularly as employee benefits are extended to cover workers' adult children — a provision of the health law. In related news, Senate Republicans are calling for standardized rules on child-only health plans to encourage more activity in the area because many companies left this market as a result of the health overhaul's requirements.
LA Times:
Conservatives love to use liberals as the boogeyman of big government, but the liberal vote has always been a dicey matter. According to most polls, about 20% of voters is a liberal, substantially less than the about 40% who identify themselves as conservative. Thus the battle for independents often determines elections, especially national ones.
Liberals are also notoriously diverse in ideology and are often seen as ineffective in governing — even by friends and allies. As H.L. Mencken noted last century: “The Liberals have many tails, and chase them all.”
Take it up with Mencken, not me. This article is a discussion of the
Gallup polls we have been discussing
here this week.
Greg Sargent:
In the end, it’s all coming down to the man who started it all: Scott Walker.
The recall fights in Wisconsin have entered their final, frenzied push, and the labor-backed group most heavily invested in this battle is going up on the air with a trio of closing ads that cast the recall elections as a referendum on the fellow who single-handedly turned Wisconsin into ground zero in a national class war and dress rehearsal for 2012.
Mark Bittman:
Life would be so much easier if we could only set our own guidelines. You could define the average weight as 10 pounds higher than your own and, voilà, no more obesity! You could raise the speed limit to 90 miles per hour and never worry about a ticket. You could call a cholesterol level of 250 “normal” and celebrate with a bag of fried pork rinds. (You could even claim that cutting government spending would increase employment, but that might be going too far.) You could certainly turn junk food into something “healthy.”
A Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food.
That’s what the food industry is doing.
Harold Meyerson:
Moreover, Obama’s election in 2008 validated one of the Democratic Party’s most fundamental achievements — enactment of civil and voting rights legislation that made America a far more racially egalitarian nation. Any anti-Obama candidacy from within the party runs up against the justifiable sense of pride and historic vindication that Democrats took in Obama’s election.
The Democratic threat to Obama, then, won’t come in the primaries. It will come in the general election, when millions of voters who surged for Obama in 2008 — disproportionately young and minority — may stay home in silent referendum on Obama’s failure to fix a dysfunctional economy. Obama needs to figure out what to say and do to rekindle their (and everyone else’s) hope.