Employment, Health Insurance and Means Testing

The CBO Budget Outlook (2014-24) is out today, and much of the focus is on their revised estimate of the ACA’s impact on the labor market (Appendix C, pp. 118-27). CBO is projecting that “the ACA will cause a reduction of roughly 1 percent in aggregate labor compensation over the 2017-2024 period, compared with what it would have been otherwise” (p. 117). This is basically CBO’s estimate of the impact of the marginal tax rate on labor income created by the various policy structures of the ACA that Casey Mulligan has written about. As I wrote in this post, you get less of something if you tax it, so if that is not your goal (it is with tobacco taxes, for example) then you are left to decide whether the reduction is worth achieving an alternative goal(s). That can be a difficult question to answer, because you are trading off important things-labor market participation, rates of uninsured, and the system reform provisions of the ACA.

Is reduced labor market participation a sign that we should move away from the structure of the ACA? If yes, to where? Continue reading “Employment, Health Insurance and Means Testing”

Still Seeking Clarity on Private Score

I am still seeking to better understand the assumptions of the private score of the health policy proposal put forth by Republican Senators Burr, Coburn and Hatch. Yesterday, around 11:20am EST, I emailed the following addresses at the organization that put out the private score of the PCARE proposal, Center for Health and Economy (contact@healthandeconomy.org and press@healthandeconomy.org) seeking more information. I have still not gotten a reply. Continue reading “Still Seeking Clarity on Private Score”

Private Score of Senate Republican Health Proposal

Brad Flansbaum sent me a link to a private score of PCARE, the reform plan released on Monday by Republican Sens. Burr, Coburn, and Hatch. I don’t know the Center for Health and the Economy, though I do know several members of their advisory board and many of you will as well. I don’t have my own simulation model to be able to verify these sorts of results, and the CBO is the final word, but I will just assume that a group that has Uwe and Holtz-Eakin on the Board must be somewhat credible. There is much to be learned here, even if you assume this to be an overly optimistic score.

First off, lets just say that the rage machine that has been perfected to argue against the ACA could get plenty cranked up from the these results. There is a breathless Americans for Prosperity Ad running in North Carolina talking about a nice lady losing her doctor in an Obamacare plan, in health policy speak, due to the rise of the narrow network. Yep, this score says PCARE will have a slight increase in persons covered by 2023 compared to the ACA, but most of that arises from a shift of people into narrow network plans. Continue reading “Private Score of Senate Republican Health Proposal”