Single Payer or Multi-Payer
Single-Payer vs. Public Option: Can Either System Address Rising Health Care Prices?
Katie Gudiksen, Senior Health Policy Researcher March 29, 2018
In February 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released data that National Health Expenditures accounted for 17.9% of Gross Domestic Product (GPD) and exceeded $10,300 per person. Even more alarming, CMS predicts that health expenditures will increase at an average rate of 5.5%, faster than inflation or increase in GPD, so that by 2026, health care will cost almost 20% of GDP. As a result of escalating costs of health care and increasing cost-sharing and co-pays for individual patients, those on the left of the political spectrum …
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Special California Assembly Hearings Provide Insights and Solutions to Increasing Healthcare Costs
Sammy Chang, Health Policy Researcher February 20, 2018
After the public outcry following last year’s tabling of SB 562 (Lara), which would have created a single-payer program in California, a special California Assembly committee was formed. The Assembly Select Committee on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage began hearings in late October 2017 and adjourned on February 7th, 2018. While much of the hearings was a crash course on health insurance, some of them addressed high healthcare prices. This month, we will summarize two of the hearings that focused on understanding the origins of high healthcare pricing …
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Bailout or Bust? How CSR Payments Are in a Precarious State
Source Fellow September 29, 2017
By: Briana Moller, Student Fellow What’s Happened Earlier this year, President Trump began discussing the idea of eliminating cost sharing reduction (“CSR”) payments to insurance companies. (1) CSR payments are reimbursements the federal government provides to insurance companies that provide discounts to enrollees with incomes between 100 and 250% of the poverty line. (2) In a recent tweet, the President referred to CSR payments as “bailouts” to insurance companies and threatened to end these payments “very soon!” So what does this all mean? If President Trump eliminates CSR payments, insurance …
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Academic Articles & Reports Round Up: April 2016
Elizabeth Nicholson, Research Fellow May 2, 2016
Happy May! April produced a number of articles and reports on interesting aspects of healthcare issues. As always, healthcare cost was at the forefront of the scene. Also discussed were pharmaceutical cost, the intersection of quality and cost, cost-sharing, the likelihood of a single-payer healthcare system in the United States, the effects of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, and the ins and outs of the new Medicare payment system. HEALTHCARE COST Health Affairs published an article entitled Study of Physician And Patient Communication Identifies Missed Opportunities To Help Reduce Patients’ Out-Of-Pocket …
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April Articles & Reports Roundup
Jaime S. King, Executive Editor May 1, 2015
While April brought us little in the way of showers, it did offer a nice range of articles and reports that focus on competition in health care markets and payment reform initiatives, including accountable care organizations (ACOs). This issue of the Roundup will tackle payment reform initiatives first, then move on to competition, and wrap up with a handful of articles examining state initiatives and opportunities. Payment Reform Initiatives The April academic literature examined the ability of payment reform initiatives, including payment for performance, reference pricing, and provider risk sharing …
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