Health Care Plans: A Real Stinker Today

Last night, I argued that it was long past time for the debate over the public plan to get specific. In response, longtime commenter Wisewon -- who doesn't seem to be commenting much on the new site -- e-mailed his take. Wisewon has been in the industry a long time, and though I don't always agree with his perspective, I've long since learned to heed it. I wouldn't necessarily term what he's written an argument against the public plan.

A number of you have asked me what I think of Paul Ryan's health care plan.  I think it's a serious plan--but it's serious in the way that serious government plans are, which is to say that it has virtually no hope of being enacted as written.Consider Matt Yglesias' relatively uncharitable, but accurate, summation:

I've been saying that a public option with negotiated rates probably won't post much of a price advantage against private insurers. But according to the Congressional Budget Office (pdf), that's an overoptimistic take. The public option's premiums, they say, will actually be more expensive than private insurance:

Over the course of this week, I'll be asking some health-care experts what they'd like Santa to add to the bill during conference committee, and publishing their responses on the blog. In this post, Jacob Hacker, the Stanley B.

Ezra Klein posted a super-long chart making this point yesterday, but it really can’t be said often enough. The overwhelming reason that health care is so expensive in the United States is that Americans pay high prices for health care services.

High-deductible plans certainly have their detractors, but ever since their introduction in 2003, the plans have been becoming

Randy Durig submits:By Sam Watry of Durig Capital 5.708% Yield to Maturity

I promised to return to this subject after I'd dug into the details a bit more, so here we are. The rumor going around that the health-care bills won't let you pay your doctor for services that your insurer won't provide is simply false. It relies on a misunderstanding of what private contracting means in Medicare, and then a misunderstanding of how it's been applied -- or not applied -- to the health-care bill.