I'm a research associate at Duke University Margolis Center. I used to be Richard Mayhew, a mid-level bureaucrat at UPMC Health Plan. I started writing here and have not found a reason to stop.
Friend of the blog, Emma Sandoe and other researchers in Boston, ran a poll on Medicare for All and Medicaid Buy-in programs. The results are interesting on several metrics: Medicare for All has about 36% support and 38% opposition. That is a steep hill to climb to build a majority coalition. Medicaid Buy-in has a […]
Over the summer, there were plenty of headlines declaring major pharmaceutical companies either holding off on price increases or rolling back list prices on some of their drugs. This news generated Trump positive headlines within the framework that he could convince Pharma to give better deals than anyone else. And Pharma went along as it […]
Larry Levitt astutely, as he usually does, encapsulates the core trade-offs of any and all versions of Medicare for All proposals: Every health policy has trade-offs, and with Medicare for all, they’re big ones. On the one hand: Universal coverage, reduced prices, no premiums, and lower out-of-pocket costs. On the other hand: Higher taxes, more […]
Hospitals vary wildly in what services and levels of care that they offer. This is critical as the word “hospital” is both very specific and very vague in what it defines in health policy terms. When I worked at UPMC Health Plan, one of my major responsibilities was network data management. Managing the network data […]
Bloomberg recently ran a great story on a family that is facing hard times affording health insurance because they don’t qualify for ACA subsidies and they don’t get coverage through work. The key take-away for me is that this population is one of the few insured groups that receives very little direct assistance. David and […]
Healthcare cost control is tough politics. Every dollar saved is a dollar out of someone’s wallet. The benefits are far more diffused in either incrementally lower premiums or slightly lower taxes than the counterfactual projection. Our political system is optimized to emphasized the loud screams of concentrated minorities who are losing something while the vast […]
First the big news from Arizona: BREAKING: Democrat Kyrsten Sinema wins election to U.S. Senate from Arizona. #APracecall at 5:41 p.m. MST. @AP election coverage: https://t.co/miEWlbTVZW #Election2018 #AZelection — AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 13, 2018 And now the important news from Arizona: Congrats to @kyrstensinema. I wish her success. I’m grateful to all those who […]