WONK ROUND-UP. So, as it turns out, think tanks don't release all that many papers. They don't work in blog time, where weekly features seem like a good idea. So these round-ups were getting a bit thin on actual things to round-up. Mindful of that, I'm broadening the mandate a bit, and will be including all sorts of wonky happenings, from new candidate plans to academic papers. to journal studies. Ready? Let's go.
- DoddCare: Chris Dodd released his health care plan yesterday, and it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. It essentially creates a Federal Employees Health Benefit Program for all Americans -- which means all Americans will have access to a menu of subsidized and regulated private plans. There's a mandate for coverage, so it will achieve something quite close to universality, and once you're in Dodd's new healthmart, your insurance can follow you from job to job. That said, the plan has no public insurance option, doesn't dissolve the current system or even envelope currently existing federal programs, and doesn't look to me like it's got much in the way of cost control. It's considerably less ambitious than what both Edwards and Obama have proposed. However, it's the sort of plan that, if you believe Congress will be more likely to pass something modest than massive, actually appears achievable. I'm not, myself, a fan of incrementalism, but others are, and Dodd's proposal is a fairly wise way of going about it. Given his poll numbers, though, it's rather surprising he didn't go for something a bit more game-changing. I was genuinely hoping for something approaching single-payer from him. It would've allowed him to break through on the subject, while this plan will be lost in the mix.
- Insurance Matters. A New England Journal of Medicine study tracked what happens when individuals who've long been uninsured enter Medicare. This won't exactly shock anyone in the audience, but it turns out that they need a lot more care than those who've been insured in recent years. They've got all sorts of conditions no one's been treating, This costs more money. Astonishing, I know. One issue with the uninsured is that we often are, in a sense, kicking the can down the road. We live in a society that does guarantee emergency care. But dealing with hypertension when it begins rather than ten years after it first started not only improves heath, but can cost less. Statin drugs are cheaper than heart surgeries.
- The Edwards Tax Plan. Billed as "Restoring Economic Fairness," the Edwards tax plan has the normal mixture of family-friendly tax credits and EITC increases. The big news, such as it goes, is that it raises the rate on capital gains income back up to 28 percent ("the same rate signed into law by President Reagan."), thus bringing the taxation of income from wealth back into line with the rates on income from labor. It also repeals the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year.
- How Pre-K Programs Pay-Off in the States. Wondering how high-quality Pre-K programs have effected "federal and state budgets, crime costs, and the earnings of pre-K participating children and adults" in, say, Missouri? EPI's got ya' covered.
- A Sustainable Health System For All Americans. The good folks at New America tell you what their perfect system would look like. "It would shift the responsibility for providing health insurance from the employer to the individual, freeing American companies to concentrate on growth and competitiveness without having to worry about rising health care costs. It would make health insurance mandatory for all U.S. citizens, but it would also offer generous subsidies and large risk pools to help defray the cost of premiums. It would be guided by a refocused approach to health care delivery that emphasizes prevention, early diagnosis, and evidence-based treatments rather than expensive and often known-to-be ineffective diagnostic and treatment techniques. And it would encourage the widespread adoption of information technology to reduce administrative costs and help all clinicians and patients share best-practice information in real time."
--Ezra Klein
