Trumpcare – The Baseline Scenario

By James Kwak

The Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the Republican health care plan, as passed in the House, is out. The bottom line is that many more people will lack health coverage than under current law—23 million by 2026—even though the bill allows states to relax the essential health benefits package, which should in theory attract younger, healthier people. This is not a surprise.

I just want to comment on the role of markets in all of this, which I think is not fully understood. For example, the Times article by the very up-to-speed Margot Sanger-Katz explains that the American Health Care Act of 2017 will make markets “dysfunctional.”

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This is consistent with the rosy view that many people, particularly centrist Democrats, have of health care: if we could only get markets to behave properly (correct for market failures, to use the jargon), everything would be great.

But that’s not how markets work.

Continue reading “How Markets Work” →

By James Kwak

After the dangerous clown show that has been the Trump White House, it’s comforting to return to some good, old-fashioned conservative policymaking: bashing the poor to cut taxes on the rich. I’m talking, of course, about the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Health care financing can sometimes seem like a complicated topic. Adverse selection, risk adjustment, blah blah blah. But it’s easy to understand the American Health Care Act or, as it is sure to be known, Trumpcare. In the medium term, financing policies have little effect on the price of health care. At most we can hope to “bend the [long-term] cost curve.” So health care policy essentially comes down to a single question: Who pays?

Continue reading “Soak the Poor, Feed the Rich” →