Donuts vs. Broccoli
Ezra Klein points to a two-year-old paper titled "Cheap Donuts and Expensive Broccoli: The Effect of Relative Prices on Obesity." The abstract, which is all I've read: Americans have been getting fatter since at least the mid 1980s. To better understand this public health problem, much attention has been devoted to determining the underlying cause of increasing body weights in the U.S. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 24, 2009 15:14
Americans Getting Fatter, Living Longer
Luysii points to CDC data showing that American mortality rates are dropping year after year while we simultantaneously get fatter and fatter. S/he points to several possibilities: #1: More people are exercising than they used to. How many joggers and walkers did you see on the streets 20, 30 years ago? #2: Fewer people are smoking. Forget lung cancer (if you can). ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 21, 2009 14:54
Obama’s Op-Ed on Health Care
President Obama, seeing that he is taking a beating in the polls, and that health care is starting to founder took to the pages of the New York Times to lay out the case for health care reform. I think he did a rather bad job of it. He could have done it with far, far fewer ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 17, 2009 14:25
Buh-Bye Public Option
The Obama Administration may be dropping the public option requirement from its health care agenda. PHOENIX — The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate. Along ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 17, 2009 13:12
Health Reform: What Liberals Want
Kevin Drum seconds Alex Massie that a British-style nationalized health system is not a politically feasible option in the United States. Indeed, even Democrats don't want that: [W]ith the exception of a few outliers, the liberal community really, truly doesn't want a fully government owned and operated healthcare system like the NHS. We want a government-funded healthcare system like Medicare or ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 12, 2009 10:36
Life Expectancy in the U.S.
Is it the poor health care system, or is the U.S.’s poor showing in life expectancy statistics due to something else such as behavioral or social factors? These are the questions that Samuel Preston, Jessica Ho asks and try to answer. Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international comparisons, primarily because of high mortality rates above ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 11, 2009 16:40
Insurance: You Keep Using That Word…
The Obama Administration is pushing an 8-pronged list of "Health Insurance Consumer Protections." No Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history. No Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses. No Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care Insurance companies must fully ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 11, 2009 13:58
Healthcare Reform ‘Fact-Checking’
Steve Benen heaps praise on ABC News' new Fact Check segment for "actually informing the public about a controversy in a fair and accurate way." Kate Snow tackled the vile right-wing demagoguery on end-of-life care, and while she refrained from calling Palin and her ilk "liars," she made it very clear that the accusations about euthanasia are completely wrong. It wasn't ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 11, 2009 12:09
Preventive Medical Care: Really Worth It?
Is preventative medical care really worth it? I can see how eating a sensible diet, exercising, and such could lead to health care savings overall, but these are all things that don’t really need to involve medical care.[1] How about those preventative measures that do involve the medical industry? The CBO says, “Hang on a minute there…” Preventive ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 14:07
Jeff Jarvis Has Cancer: Robots Attack
Longtime blogosphere stalwart Jeff Jarvis has announced that he has prostate cancer. Thankfully, they caught it early and he's got access to the most advanced treatment options. I’m opting for robotic surgery – geek that I am, how could I not? My only fear is that they’ll wheel me into the O.R. and I’ll see that the machine is powered by Dell. I’ve ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 13:29
Winning the Healthcare Fight
David Frum frets that conservatives might be in for a Pyrrhic victory in the health care fight if they define winning as "beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself." [W]e’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 9, 2009 07:24
U.S. Life Expectancy: We’re Number 1
Tyler Cowen passes along a reader comment that, The difference in life expectancy between the US and Netherlands is often referred to as an example of how superior semi-socialized health care increases life expectancy. At birth, someone living in the Netherlands can expect to live 2.35 years longer than someone born in the US, but at age 65, the difference is ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 31, 2009 09:28
Democrats Should Embrace States’ Rights
Alex Massie argues that the current inability of the Democrats to pass meaningful health care reform, one of their signature issues, despite overwhelming control of the government shows the system is broken. It's more difficult than it was in LBJ's day, mind you. All the horse-trading that once went on in private now takes place in a world of Twitter and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 30, 2009 14:11
Federalism and Democracy
Continuing a long-running theme at his blog, Matt Yglesias laments that Senators from small states wield so much power. The latest fuel is a NYT feature on six moderates who are supposedly the linchpins to putting together a bipartisan health care deal and who routinely hash out the details of same over snacks. [V]ast power is being wielded by people who, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 28, 2009 14:37
Controlling Medicare Costs—IMAC
The CBO has analyzed some of the suggested methods for controlling health care costs, and the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) in particular. The findings so far is not all that good, In particular, CBO reviewed draft legislation transmitted to the Congress by the Administration on July 17, 2009, titled the Independent Medicare Advisory Council Act of 2009. CBO estimates ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 27, 2009 13:09
